


A Place for Becoming

by MotherInLore



Series: Slayers West [9]
Category: Always Coming Home - Ursula K. Le Guin, Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Crossover, Difficult Marriage, Does 'Coming of age' make sense if the guy's already a thousand years old?, F/M, Family Drama, Fish out of Water, Gray Morality, Seriously folks so much worldbuilding, Starting Over, Worldbuilding, sorcerer's apprentice - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-05-16 02:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 123,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14802638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherInLore/pseuds/MotherInLore
Summary: Trapped in a Pact and stripped of his powers, Xellos comes to the Na valley.  What in the Void is he supposed to do now?I'll put warnings on a couple of individual chapters as things come up.  I mostly try to make these stories stand alone but in this case I recommend you read "Hinges and Gyres" first.





	1. In the Five Houses of Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, took me long enough.... OK guys, this one's deep into LeGuin territory, so expect slow-moving plots and a liberal (in both senses of the word) sprinkling of sociopolitical rants. I've tagged this with the name my OC has used for most of the series, but in this one both the POV characters are thinking in Kesh, so her name is translated to Swallow for the duration.

For the few moments before exhaustion pulled him into sleep, Xellos thought muzzily about the extraordinary degree of influence his human body had on his mood. Here and now, stripped of all power, confined to a form that was vulnerable to everything from microorganisms on up, locked in a twisted kind of Pact with a woman who hated him even more than usual for a Pact-thrall, exiled from Lord Beastmaster's presence for the miniscule few decades of existence he had left...even with all these incitements to misery and dread, the body was happy. The body knew only that after two nights of agonizing withdrawal symptoms, he had finally allowed the pull of the link between himself and Swallow of the Serpentine to bring them back together. The body had what it needed. The singing bliss of that relief overrode everything but itself. The prickly grass of the bluff he lay on dropped away, as did the sawtooth roar of the millions of bugs down in the marshes below the bluff. He slept as sweetly as if he'd spent the day in an overcrowded jail, stuffing himself. The body demanded further attention when he woke up, perhaps two hours later. First, it informed him that Swallow had been lying beside him (the last few days had been hard on her, too,) and was now starting to sit up. The bladder was ready to expel its accumulation of diluted toxins, it told him. The stomach wanted filling. Attending to these assorted needs took time and attention. Also more planning than he had bothered with hitherto, Xellos realized with some chagrin, when he learned that there was nothing to eat here but grasshoppers and cattail roots, both of which required preparation before they could be of any help to importunate stomachs. 

While Xellos looked at the bluff, trying to gauge the best route down to the cattail beds, Swallow spread out his little bundle of camping gear and frowned at the mud it had acquired during Xellos' headlong scramble through the marshes. “I don't think I'll be able to get this anything like clean with what's left of today,” she told him. “I can probably get it mostly dry, and maybe some of the mud will flake off – it'll still stink of pond tonight, though.”

In a sudden flash, Xellos realized he knew what he was going to do next. He might be bereft of any great purpose for the first time in a millennium or more, but he could still serve the mazoku. Swallow was a Pact-thrall. However weirdly the spell had shaped itself this time, no matter how negligible her strategic value, he would train her properly and corrupt her soul as well as he could. The task might be a petty one compared to some of his previous projects, but it was not dishonorable. It would give him some purpose. This decision made, he made a sound of amusement in his throat. “You have power now, Swallow. You can banish a little mud if you put your mind to it.”

The girl blinked at him, bewildered and apprehensive. She had not wanted to have the power she had received. Nor had Xellos quite intended to give it to her. _Here we are, nonetheless._ “You might start with draping it over a branch and giving it a good pummeling. Something like the one you aimed at me when you found out what we did to the City of Mind.” Swallow's gape became a glare at the mention. She had, on first meeting him some months ago, absorbed the information of his mazoku nature with scarcely a blink; mazoku were, as far as she was concerned, “some of Coyote's people,” just one more sort of being in the wide world. But then he had used her and the others to destroy the mechanical entity known, variously, as the Terrestrial Cybernet, or the City of Mind, or, casually, the Exchange. Now Swallow hated him properly.

Xellos kept his expression bland. “Only if you want to,” he said. “I'll go see about those cattail shoots you wanted.”

His astral sense was much diminished. He could tell that Swallow's buried anger came nearer the surface, but it was like seeing a dot in the sky resolve itself into the v-shape of a vulture's wings: he couldn't pick out any details about the bird in question. Nor did he sense the moment she began to draw on her new powers. Only his eyes told him that the blankets were lofting in the air as though blown by jets to the lower branches of the cottonwood tree, and then rippling wildly as Swallow assaulted them. Swallow stood below, upwind of the spattering of dust and pond-bits sprinkling down from the blankets, both her hands lifted to direct the flow of power. The double-spiral scar on her right cheek glowed white. The arm of the upper spiral bent with her frown where it stretched across her forehead. Xellos nodded to himself and began his scramble down to the cattails.

Their brief conversation about the blankets was the last time Swallow spoke to him for two or three days, unless you counted her using the plural form in her morning bouts of invective as she got herself moving. She looked at him, briefly, from time to time: a neutral gaze as they worked together to set up or take down camp, or a sharp, assessing glance as she decided when – or whether – to take a rest break. Once they located the little Sensh hamlet that had been housing her mule, she exerted herself to be appropriately grateful and charming toward their hosts for the night: her courtesy extended to Xellos, albeit cautiously. By midmorning of the next day, she was ignoring him again. 

Her sweet-voiced attentions to the mule might have been intended to put him in his place. Or perhaps she was just turning to the only friend she was certain of right now. Xellos did not greatly care which. And even with all his centuries of experience, he was not entirely certain what she was thinking. He had to guess at the thoughts from the emotions he could pick up, and he was than less sure of those. Everything felt slightly off, as though he were smelling, not real roses, but silk ones that had been doused in perfume. There were, he knew, natural human empaths, but it seemed the parallels to mazoku senses were not exact. Still, the big things he could pick up. Swallow moved in slow oscillations between grief and dread, with occasional flashes of guilt or anger – less of either of those than he might have expected from the circumstances. Her usually mobile face was still, mouth pressed tight and eyebrows slightly drawn together. It didn't move even when the tears flowed down her cheeks. 

Xellos considered it all with a certain bitter pleasure. Purer-minded mazoku, those who had not been created as spies, often expressed disgust at his ability to spend so much time in the company of optimists like the Inverse. His tolerance for complicated, mixed emotions may have done as much to advance his career as any of his other skills. _One thing about optimists, though. When things go really bad, it shakes their whole world._ It wasn't just the sudden acquisition of mazoku powers and senses that was disorienting Swallow. However much trouble she had gotten into in the past, he didn’t think she'd never been really lost before. Xellos clung to this small, familiar comfort as he tried to prove to himself that _he_ was not lost. He was enduring the aftereffects of a successful martyrdom. The sacrifice had been real, and the loss of his powers and his true form still hurt, but they had been worthwhile. And now, he had a thrall to train. He followed her westward into the hills, watching and planning.

***

Having her friend Fefinum back with them was indeed a comfort, of a sideways, prickly, mulish sort. Swallow's new senses told her nothing about Fefinum that she hadn't already learned from her companion's eloquent ears and spine. There were no dizzying eddies and currents, no hidden complexities to guess at. The mule was clever enough, but she had, essentially, four emotions: yes, no, YES!, and NO!. Swallow clung to those whenever she felt herself losing her footing in the pull of... of whatever was going on with Coyote's Son, exactly. Walking through the half-familiar landscape with a whole new set of senses would, Swallow thought, be plenty difficult enough if the new world she...felt.. stayed still. Xellos, though, was a constant shift and pull, alternately plucking and pressing against a border that was not a skin. When following the braided strands of emotion became too much, Swallow hung on the bridle and focused on the mule’s simplicities. Fefinum bore this usage patiently. Or perhaps not so very patiently. Fefinum never liked starting out in the mornings, but this time Swallow had to duck away from an attempted bite as well as the usual kicks while loading up the pack saddle. Swallow delivered her habitual morning litany of swearwords with extra vigor, and Fefinum shied as if Swallow had actually made to hit her. Swallow’s mind jerked out of Puma’s house and back to the houses of earth. 

Everything was fine once they got moving though. They plodded quietly upwards, leaving the Sensh territory for that of the Folded Hills people, and Swallow returned to brooding. She'd gotten herself into pretty deep shit, here; the mothers in Five Toads House were unlikely to ever let her live it down, which was the least of her problems, really, but one of the most deeply felt ones. She'd gone and linked herself to the worst possible sort of foreigner – not only unfathomable but infected with the mental plague known variously as Twisted-neck, Living Outside the World, or the Sickness of Man. It was the sort of thing that would put a heavy drain on Swallow's limited store of respect and standing, even in the open-minded company of the Finder's Lodge, and just when she was going to need help, too. Among the Doctors... well, she'd left home all those moons ago to learn a Klatsaand technique she meant to give to the Doctors, and she hoped they'd accept the gift. They might decide instead that her adventures over the last half year had compromised her too severely. Fefinum shied at a grasshopper that flew up in front of her nose and stepped on Swallow's foot.

Coyote's Son did not interfere while Swallow, lips clamped tight on another stream of swearwords, bandaged her broken toe tight to its neighbor, and tested her balance, gingerly. Not too bad, really, for a break. She might ride later, if Fefinum settled down enough, but it wouldn't kill her to walk. Not fun, though. Unless... _you have powers now,_ her troublesome follower had reminded her. Scary, destructive powers, at least so far. Even before she had broken away from Lina Backwards and the Stone Boy and the others and lit out for home, she had felt those chill, heavy powers building inside her, pressing against the barrier between the Sky and the Earth, as if her souls needed badly to pee.

It was better now. She had used much of that first swell in moving herself back to the place Xellos was coming to meet her, and another jugful or two trying to clean those blankets. The pool had not refilled quite so quickly this time; perhaps Xellos was feeling a little better, too. “Lina Backwards and Amelia Say Runes used their power to heal all the time,” Swallow observed aloud. Experimentally, she opened the new gate within herself that led into the Four Houses, and issued as narrow a stream as she could manage at her bandaged toes. It felt like a knife carved of ice. Swallow shrieked at the burn and turned her hand away. Somewhere behind her, Coyote's Son made a sound like a cat sneezing that was probably a suppressed giggle. The toes went numb; it took a disturbingly long time for the bluish color to fade and be replaced by red-brown, and for the numbness to become the tingle of returning blood. She tried stretching her toes; the broken one refused to move; it was still broken. Swallow took four or five hard breaths through her nose, then replaced her sock and her boot. She thumped Fefinum's shoulder as the mule took another bite from a scrub oak and grabbed the lead line. “Come on, then.”

The ache of her toes dulled as Swallow measured out the smallest drop of cold that she could manage and set it hovering a finger-span above them, and the bandages and the boot took away some of the strain of moving. She would find new ways to use this stuff, she promised herself; she wouldn't let the levels build so dangerously again. Surely someone among the Scholars would have seen something like this before, as they traveled the Souls' Ways. And if they hadn't, well, they would still be able to help her find her way around in the Four Houses. _Won't they? I'll find a way to be at home, changed as I am, won't I?_

Not everyone was able to keep living in the Valley. Every town had its “Forest-living people,” who might be philosophers, or criminals, or simply crazy – poor old Burning of the Red Adobe had used to come down for the great Wakwade and shout about how the earthquake was coming, the big one that would drown the Valley in an immense wave from the sea. People had laughed; the Exchange had tools for predicting earthquakes, and it said that that fault line would not do much for another hundred years or so. Swallow felt the ice rise in her heart. _The Exchange is dead, along, he says, with the whole City of Mind. And I helped kill it._ The stone boy and the others had warned her, more than once: “What Xellos wants is the end of the world.” She had been unable to imagine one of Coyote's people being so wrongheaded, but she had proof now. And now she was bringing him into the Valley: a creature as old as the cities under the Inland Sea, who had outmaneuvered her once already. Intentionally or not – no, if it happened, he would mean it to happen, a manipulator like that – he might turn her people against her, against them both, if for some reason he wanted her to leave. Or he might find a way to turn her against the Valley. That was the deeper fear, deeper even than her worries about being rejected by her community. What if they would be right to do so? _What if I'm bringing, not just one sick Coyote, but an earthquake, a tsunami, to my souls' home?_

Fefinum brayed indignantly and locked her legs. _“Now_ what?” Swallow cried, forcing her attention back to the trail they were following. She couldn't see anything amiss. Fefinum's load was still properly balanced. The trail was not skirting any boulders or ravines or other hazards to navigation. Very cautiously, Swallow attended to her new senses; were there dogs, or lions, or rattlesnakes nearby? She couldn't detect any. Fefinum shifted from foot to foot, rolling her eyes. When Swallow reached up to pat her, she shied away, but then shuffled closer again, rubbing her shoulder against Swallow's side, endangering Swallow's undamaged toes and almost knocking her over. Bewildered, Swallow patted the mule's neck and murmured calming sounds until her friend was ready to go on. “What's gotten into you, old woman?” Swallow watched as they walked along, trying to see where the mule's attention was; was she sniffing the air in one direction or another, picking up, perhaps, the smell of a far-off wildfire? It was late in the season, true, but the rains hadn't actually begun yet. 

Fefinum's long ears swiveled in Swallow's direction. Swallow hung back, looking off to her side, and Fefinum plodded a little further ahead, but her ears still twitched toward Swallow. _Oh, shit._ It was Swallow's nervousness making Fefinum skittish. Bright though she was, it would not occur to the mule that Swallow could be worrying about something that might happen months from now. All Fefinum knew was that her trusted traveling companion was worried, and that she probably had a reason for it. The Thing that was making Swallow smell that strongly of fear must surely be ready to spring out and eat them both, any moment now. And in those circumstances, a mule had a right to shy if she wanted to. She was telling Swallow, as plainly as she could, “Get a hold of yourself, girl! You're giving me the creeps!”

And quite right, too. Xellos was a much better warrior than Swallow was, but there was no reason she had to make this into a war. She would ask for help when she needed it; she could reach out to her friends as she always had, and to new people, too. People liked helping, especially if you thanked them often; Swallow had learned that long ago. And Xellos, like most sick people, would either get better or die of it. Swallow took a few deep breaths and began to sing, quietly, a song her sister Adsevin had given her.

_There is no knowing_   
_Only going on_   
_Only going on, a ya hey_

_I am that great being_   
_The grass bowing_

Adsevin had been given the song by an old woman, Stone Telling of the Blue Clay, who lived in Sinshan, one town north of Tachas Touchas. Stone Telling had met the song on a journey home, from further outside the world than Swallow had ever been.

 

**********

 

When Swallow started talking again, she began with practicalities. They were, she informed Xellos, as they wound their way uphill and the chaparral began to stretch up into oak forest, making for The Line, by which she meant the road made of gravel and oaken rails that the trains ran on. “I don't know if we'll be able to hitch a ride,” she said, “since losing the Exchanges will have buggered up the scheduling. But even if we don't, it's easier walking than most of the paths around here, and there are way stations with water every twenty or thirty miles.”

He nodded acknowledgment. “I see.”

“Hang these on your belt,” she added, handing Xellos a pair of crudely made copper bells with bone clappers. She had tied similar ones onto her own sash, and was in the process of hanging some more of them off Fefinum's saddle.

“Why?” Xellos kept his tone mild. He would not defy her unless it mattered. It was always wise to let the thrall think you were an ally until it was too late.

“Bears. We're heading into the hills, and they don't like surprises.”

“Ah. Quite. In the event, though, I hope you realize you have enough power to dispatch a bear, should it become necessary.”

Swallow shot him a disgusted look. “I've been careless enough as it is.”

Xellos made no attempt to unpack this statement, but simply looped the bells around his belt as instructed and clanked along in Swallow and Fefinum's jingling wake. The girl, he thought, was coming to some conclusion or decision after her days of brooding. Before nightfall, he was certain, she would be ready to talk about something other than practicalities.

He was off by about an hour and a half, as it turned out. Swallow managed to behead a quail with a mage-bolt – well-aimed, but poorly calibrated – shortly before they stopped to make camp, and clearly found this upsetting enough to drive her back into silence for a while, though as usual she had some ritual thanks to give the dead quail. But once they were bedded down on opposite sides of Fefinum, with the warm ashes of the fire near their feet and heated stones in their hands, she was ready to seek the comfort of words. “Tell me how it happened,” she demanded. “How it was that you came to trick us all into killing the City of Mind.”

Xellos shrugged automatically and uselessly, since the gesture was invisible in the dark. “I think you know most of it,” he temporized. There would come a time when she would need to know a great deal more about mazoku politics. That time was not now.

“Tell me anyway. I want- I need to understand. Better than now, at least. I don't think I'll ever see why you thought you needed to go killing the City like that, but I still... tell me how you decided. Tell me how you knew what to do.”

Xellos considered this. Now that the mission was complete, it wasn't really secret any more. And if Swallow was to be re-educated into something that the mazoku could use, even in a limited capacity, an object lesson in elemental strategy would not go amiss. “All right,” he said, at last. “Well. I came out here to the west to learn how things are here, now, looking especially for lost or little-known spell fragments that might have survived the extinction of magic in the Outlands. When I ran across Lina-san and the rest of you, I joined your group because Lina-san has a gift for finding her way into the middle of interesting situations, but I also continued my own researches here and there.”

“You knew about the Carrion Gyre before I said anything,” Swallow observed dispassionately.

“Yes, a little. From a woman named Pandora who had lived among the Kesh for a while and left notes behind, as well as some... well, you would probably call them 'Four-house People.' Later, as I began to realize what the Exchanges were, I found more there, too.”

“And you decided the Exchanges had to be destroyed.”

“Lord Beastmaster decided. I simply described the situation.”

“Why – how- how did you know what to do to- hurt the Exchanges?” Swallow's voice was raw, not with tears, but with tension.

“The City told me, of course! I asked what would destroy them, and I got a list of scenarios. The one involving the magnetic poles simply happened to be the most feasible.”

“Reversing them.”

“Exactly. It took an immense amount of power, of course, but, from a certain vantage, it was quite simple. I plan to teach you more about that, in time, now that you have powers of your own.”

“Just that one thing: reversing the poles. That was all you did?”

“It was enough,” Xellos reminded her. “And not exactly easy, either – Even sacrificing myself and the lesser mazoku, I could not have done it without Lina-san and the rest of you, and of course, you needed to be led to it, since I'm aware you do not share Lord Beastmaster's goals. But it was worth it, from our point of view; we could not have allowed the City of Mind to spread further than it already had.”

His words were deliberately multilayered, and he fancied he could judge when Swallow discerned each of his meanings separately, by the emotional roil they left behind as they struck home. There was anger and self-pity there, at having been duped. Horror at his coldly-stated goals and frustration as she recognized an argument she could not win, at least not with him. There was worry, harder to attribute specific reasons to that when there were so many options. Also, though...

“I see that my answers have in fact given you some measure of comfort,” he murmured into the dark. “Have you absolved yourself of guilt in this matter, then?”

“Not entirely, I-” Swallow cut herself off and started again, “I don't think I'll try to explain just now. It's probably better if we don't talk about this too much more; one of us has to be wrong if we do, and we still have to go on living with each other... we don't need to poke at our wounds.”

“There is that,” Xellos agreed, and bent his attention to the shifting ripples Swallow's emotional self created as she moved between whatever comfort she had found and whatever she was worrying about. He caught the tug of determination that overrode both and pulled her into calm. Some kind of meditation technique, perhaps, meant to ease a troubled mind into sleep. The body called his attention back to itself: itched, disliked its temperature and the hardness of the ground, the tickle of dust in the nose. But it, too, pulled away from the world until Xellos slept as well.


	2. Initial Negotiations

The view from the top of the hill next morning was a clear illustration of the advantages of flying, or teleportation; Xellos could count five switchbacks on the way down. However, a hundred steps to the left, if one didn't have to contend with gravity, would bring them to within a hundred yards of the night's planned stopping point: a train-rest – a plain, sturdy building that could shelter mules in the dry season or fuel for the steam engines in the wet, with a well for the use of either. Some of them had little cabins attached for the use of the humans who maintained the Line; this one didn't. And it was, since they couldn't fly, a day's march away. Oh, well. Swallow was too untaught to move anyone but herself, and the mule possessed only such magic as allowed her to gauge the degree to which she could defy Swallow.

Swallow raised an eyebrow at him. “You're not that weak, Coyote's Son. _Dahudaz imhai._ It's only footsteps.”

_Walk here, now._ Xellos considered, and rejected, offering to teach her the transportation spells. Under her steady, practical demeanor, he could still feel the deep roil of her anger and grief over the death of the City of Mind. She would not respond well to that kind of help from him for a time yet. Well, he could take anger, even thrive on it. It held so many possibilities... they started the walk down.

Now that she was talking again, Swallow spent much of their traveling time over the next few days stuffing him with Valley lore: songs, stories, family gossip from Tachas Touchas, where her mother and sister lived, and from Chulkumas, where Swallow herself tended to roost between trading trips. Xellos let it all find room inside his mind somewhere and waited patiently for patterns to emerge; strings to pull, people to placate or avoid, metaphors likewise. Like most folklore, the Kesh teaching stories were mutivalent and evocative. There was, for instance, the story of Dira, who was said to be still waiting out in the woods somewhere, that could be taken as either a portrait of a subtle kind of domestic abuse or as a summary of the pathologies of certain tick-borne illnesses. Xellos was not entirely sure if drowning the involved parasite in eucalyptus oil was intended to treat one or both of these situations, and resolved to be on his guard. Gradually, he decided the most pressing mystery to delve into for his purposes was the Kesh tendency to view personal heroism and sacrifice as something that proper people grew out of toward the end of adolescence, as one “made one's souls” and “became a whole person.” It was a point of view that looked to have quite a number of troublesome implications. 

Once he came to this conclusion, he pressed her for stories about the beginning of the Valley, about the Lost Cities that he remembered as a wonderfully chaotic and fertile civilization and that featured in Kesh stories only as warnings. About how Coyote came to make the world. Stories about warriors, if she had any. The stories contradicted each other and sometimes themselves, but after a day listening to dozens of them, the pattern became clearer. Most peoples had a founding myth that said, We are descended from heroes, from the Gods who slew the great demons of the dark. We are the beloved children of this deity or that one. We will return to paradise when we prove ourselves worthy. Not in the Valley. The common thread running through the Valley stories, especially the ones that seemed to have the most basis in historical fact, was: We are descended from the dirty, hungry, no-account people who hid when the heroes were killing each other, the ones who weren't too proud to eat bones and carrion with Coyote and burn dung and trash to stay warm. Coyote allowed us into her country, but she didn't quite mean to, and sometimes she regrets it. We were lucky. And now we have to be mindful. 

Somehow, they'd managed to achieve this humility without a great deal of guilt to go with it. Usually, when humans refused the error of placing themselves at the top of creation, they created a mythology in which they were kept at the bottom as a punishment, and sublimated their aggression into competitive piety and guilt. The Kesh, or at least Swallow, shrugged and said, “living is hard.” They were the victims – or survivors – of a destruction wrought long ago by the “backwards-head people,” and the question of their own innocence or guilt was left carefully unasked. The kind of politics that Xellos used when he needed to stir up trouble still happened – he wondered if Swallow was completely blind to the ways she judged the “old men” of Tachas Touchas for being judgmental – but rabble-rousing in the usual style was going to be something of a challenge, always assuming Xellos felt the need to raise some rabble for some reason. Even the perennial goad of the Wrongs of the Past – because rabble always thought they had been cheated – lost some of its sharpness in Kesh grammar, where verbs in the past tense formed, automatically, in the subjunctive. Well, it would be interesting, figuring out what he needed to do – and of course, a great deal depended on what he was able to make of his thrall.

He tried to teach the reluctant Swallow a little about magic, and a little more about the real state of the world. A human might never directly perceive the true vileness of it; the arrogance of the gods that had pulled their pathetic _creation_ out of the embracing sea of chaos and held it stuck in this unlikely shape. Being stuck in a physical body himself now, Xellos was beginning to understand just how strongly the world influenced the perceptions of its creatures. But that worked both ways, and Swallow might be able to see some things now that she wouldn't have understood before. “What you think of as matter – the stuff the world is made out of – is mostly illusion and empty space, actually,” he told her. “An atom, which is the common unit for matter, consists of a core of positive and neutral particles forced to stay in proximity with each other, and negatively charged ones orbiting them, as the moon orbits the earth – pulled by the positive ones but never allowed to rejoin. Since the next atom over is also surrounded by the negative charges, they repel each other – anything that feels solid to you is actually pushing you away.”

Swallow nodded. “Yes, it's all energy, really, isn't it? And the dance: pulling inward and springing outward.” 

Xellos blinked. He didn’t really have a sense yet for where Swallow drew the line between the mystical and the mundane, but on the evidence the line wiggled quite a bit. “This is another one of those deeply-held mazoku secrets that everyone in the Valley already knows, isn't it,” he said flatly. They spent a few minutes working their way around a poison oak patch.

“Well, it's the kind of thing you can know and not know at the same time, don't you think?” Swallow said once they were on the main trail again. “One of my friends in Wakwaha-na, Beanflower, showed me a periodic table; she had some religious feelings about it. It didn't mean that much to me.” Swallow shrugged. “Most humans are interested in human-sized things, so we don't spend a lot of time thinking about how the dance might work in places we can't see. But we do all know the shape of the dance.”

“You may be able to see more of those places now.” 

Swallow didn't answer.

Well, there was no harm in letting her get used to her new plane of perception gradually. Particularly since Xellos was having his own challenges along that line. The body was strong and well-made; it mostly had little trouble doing the things required of it. But it had... needs. More and more of them all the time, it seemed, starting with learning not to hear his heartbeat and moving outward from there. Disgusting as it was, the constant cycle of the digestive and excretory systems was the easiest to get used to, since Mazoku, in their fashion, did something similar. Moving and resting he knew from following humans about for all those centuries, although the reasons for it were certainly much clearer when he had muscles of his own. Sleeping and waking he tried not to think about too much. The body was already so vulnerable, a few hours a night where he wasn't actively guarding it weren't going to make that much difference, proportionally speaking. Watching his own mind grow slower and weaker and more panicky if he forced himself to stay awake was even more frightening than letting himself shut down. Besides, there was always the chance that he would dream of Her again.

The hardest thing to get used to was having a skin, not just a surface. The muscles wanted freedom and motion, with the corollary freedom to stop moving, near the end of the day. The skin, weirdly, wanted confinement. It wanted to be pressed and squeezed. Not willy-nilly, of course. Not beyond certain boundaries of pressure and temperature. All the same, he often found himself in the mornings wrapped tightly in his blankets, pressed up against Fefinum if they were outdoors, or a wall if they were taking shelter in a train-rest or a little town. He found himself inclined to linger over the process of combing his hair, for the feel of the comb's teeth against his skull. Swallow's constant physical contact with Fefinum – all those pats and strokes and harness adjustments, filled Xellos with distaste and envy in equal measure.

Perhaps it was a mammal thing. The necessities of intrauterine brain development were such that anything with hair would have some hazy notion of a warm, safe, small place somewhere. Neotenic mammals like humans and mice, whose newborn young were pink, squirmy, and effectively immobile, would have reinforcing memories of being carried and guarded, of warm nests and the bodies of parents and siblings. To say nothing of nursing. Why any of this nonsense should carry over to someone who had been reduced, rather than grown, to his current state was beyond him, but bodies were stubborn. His wanted to be touched. Held. 

One part of him in particular. That, at least, was not entirely a surprise, and he had made some plans. He chose a time when they were crossing a sunny, green clearing full of bright orange poppies and soft tangles of weeds, a comfortable place to stay for a while. “Would you care to help me with this, Swallow?” 

She turned toward him, and then let go of Fefinum's lead and let her eyebrows raise at his tented trousers. “Do you want me to? I did wonder if you might turn out to be a ginkgo.”

Xellos frowned briefly, trying to parse this. The Pact-gone-wrong had left him with a native-born understanding of Kesh vocabulary and grammar, but not idioms. However, given the context, “ginkgo” wasn't too hard to figure out. “I am – was created as– a spy,” he told her, finally. “A man with slightly feminine mannerisms often has greater freedom of motion and access than one who does a great deal of crowing. Not to mention a greater impact when he sheds them.” Xellos dipped his head and flashed her a wicked glance from under level brows, tensing his posture in illustration, then relaxed again. “By the same token, sex is too useful a tool under too many circumstances for it to make sense to limit it to certain preferences. I'm very adaptable. And at the moment,” he threw another glint her way, “I believe we might give each other a great deal of pleasure.”

Swallow's mouth tightened. Her carefully summoned patience was, this time, overriding amusement, desire, and irritation in equal measures. Xellos waited with some eagerness to see how she would squirm out of this one. Not shouting or throwing magic around, as The Inverse would have. Would she stammer? Make excuses? 

“That will probably happen between us at some point,” she told him bluntly, “but you have some things you need to learn about your own body first, before you start fucking other people. So I will go gathering for a while, to give you some privacy, and come back.” She pulled Fefinum's picket and tether out of the nearest saddlebag.

Xellos blinked. Inside the Barrier Lands, even a self-declared “whirlpool,” as Swallow had once been, would have played games. And her assumption of his ignorance was... not entirely unjustified, he had to admit. He knew how it all worked, of course, and had acquired some considerable skill, but that was then. _Dahudaz Imhai._

Swallow, already swiveling her way between a stand of aromatic eucalyptus trees, called back over her shoulder. “I'm told it's better if you switch hands from time to time, and vary grip pressures. Keeps you from getting too habituated to any one kind of touch.”

_I am a hundred times her age,_ Xellos reminded himself, _and I spent centuries doing incubus work before the Kouma wars broke out. I will_ not _blush._ Still, true to Swallow's command, he took himself in hand and began to experiment.

He continued his experiments off and on over the next quarter moon or so. Mostly, he learned why human men were so given to speaking of their reproductive parts as if they were separate entities. The ones he had acquired put him rather in mind of a particularly feckless, if eager to please, puppy. He attempted different grips and pressures, as Swallow had advised, and also different fantasies, drawn from his long and varied experience, trying to gauge if there were certain body types or relationships or situations that he found more enticing than others. To anything his mind called up, the Puppy responded, _We Are Thinking About Sex Now!!_ and bounded up cheerfully. From time to time, it did so without any outside stimulus at all; when Xellos was thinking about a rock in his shoe, or the intricacies of Kesh mythology, or the likelihood of getting something other than succotash for dinner. _Are We Thinking About Sex Now?!?_ It took him some effort to learn how to ignore those.

***

The Line brought them to a hamlet called DiVoo – less a town than a very large wagonrest with six or seven permanent houses huddled nearby; people poured in when the Train came and flowed away again to the other little towns in between times. The permanent residents recognized Swallow as being “from the Wine People,” and threw a party for her and Xellos – not for any virtue either of them possessed (though Swallow remembered everyone's name,) but as an efficient way go allow everyone in town to hear the latest news at once. Nearly everyone in DiVoo spoke TOK, the language of the Exchanges and of the region's traders, so the discussion was livelier and easier to follow than in the more insular towns they had encountered so far.

The chief gossip, a wiry woman with eager eyes made bigger by thick spectacles, began by trying to place Xellos. “From the Falares Islands, are you?” but she politely backed off when his answering headshake was not followed by more substantial information. Instead, the conversation turned more general, though not less fraught with peril. “Our Exchange has been down since the Equinox, can you believe it? Not so much as a repair ping since then. We've been arguing lately about whether we should make a ceremony to the God of Metal, just in case.”

“It's not just you,” Swallow said tightly, with a sideways glance at Xellos, “Every exchange between here and Ikul is dark; maybe further out than that. Whatever happened, it's really big.” The only lie in that statement was the word “maybe.” Xellos smirked a little, making sure no one but Swallow noticed, but otherwise remained silent through the ensuing babble of dismay, shock, and speculation. It bounced back and forth a great deal between the people who wanted to know what could possibly have happened, and the ones who were more concerned about what to do next – how to make sure the Trains ran smoothly? How to make trade arrangements with the Cotton people and the Amaranth people - would they actually have to send out envoys for every little thing? 

Swallow very sensibly let them natter without volunteering anything further, though her posture was more hunched than relaxed, and her suppressed panic as she listened was sweet enough to be cloying. She relaxed a little whenever they talked about what to do next, and tensed and looked at Xellos whenever they talked about the Exchange. Amused, he decided to stir the pot, just a little, and raised his voice. “Do you people use compasses?”

They did, though rarely. With only a very little prompting, the people of DiVoo made the connection between the odd behavior of the compass they kept in their temple and the dark Exchange. But they soon veered off the trail again. A hunched, scholarly person called Aldosh swore he had read, somewhere in the depths of the Archives of the Exchange, about other times the poles had reversed; it just happened, every few or ten or hundred thousand years. Other people started talking about the Metal God again. Still others wondered how long it would take the City of Mind to send repair machines from outside the affected area to start fixing things, which made Swallow coil up like a salted slug, but she refrained from blurting anything, and no one else followed up either. Either they didn't make the connection that the reversal was really everywhere, or they didn't think it worthwhile to argue the point. By the time the party broke up and she and Xellos returned to their little shelter in the wagonrest, Swallow was trembling.

“I keep being afraid they'll realize we had something to do with it,” she said, “which is silly, I know, but there it is.”

“And did you think I was going to clue them in?” Xellos snorted. “I see no necessity to put us in danger over a few illusions. Particularly when they're so determined not to see the truth. You'll notice even my mention of the poles didn't wake them up to a hint of the real circumstances; they made up their own comfortable explanations.” He smiled broadly and spread his hands. “Complacency breeds complacency.”

Swallow looked at him through narrowed eyes, no longer trembling, but still afraid. “So it does,” she sighed at last. “May it continue to do so for some time, yet.”


	3. Coming Inland

There were no trains planned to leave from DiVoo to anywhere near Sed or even Stoy, let alone Wakwaha, anytime soon, so Swallow, Xellos, and Fefinum kept walking; still following the line, but on a dirt trail that ran parallel to it, rather than the roadbed itself. Xellos wondered aloud why they would have such a thing, since so far no one else had, and Swallow, unexpectedly, smiled. “We'll meet her in a day or two. A train-rest or two away from here, depending on which one she's cutting wood for.”

“A wisewoman?”

Swallow shrugged. “Wise? Yes, I think so, but that's not why the trail. She's... kind of a professional whirlpool. The Folded Hills people have these very silly ideas about inheritances, you see; they trace their descent through the paternal line, and it makes all kinds of trouble for them, especially when it comes to sex. Natauk is willing to sleep with some of the men who aren't supposed to be with anyone yet, and they bring her things. And since she's mostly away working on the Line, and since she's barren, everyone kind of turns a blind eye.”

“I see,” Xellos said, amused. “Is prostitution really such a foreign concept in the Na Valley that you don't have a word for it?” He certainly couldn't think of the Kesh word for it, if there was one; he used TOK, instead.

“You mean someone who does sex the way a potter makes pots?” Swallow considered, then shook her head. “We have stories about the women the Condor Men stole and used when they were making war on everyone. We also have women in the Valley who have a lot of sex, and maybe some of them accept gifts, the way Natauk does; but we don't have anyone who does sex for work, like planting or weaving. So far as I know,” Swallow added, prudently. After a longer pause, she added, “I don't see why anyone would want to do that more than once or twice a day, after all, and the world is full of other kinds of work to do. Natauk might have a reputation, but she spends most of her time cutting wood for the engines or bedding for the mules, and most of her food comes from the forest or the Train, not DiVoo. The boys are just extra. And she herself is a lot of fun. Well-read, well traveled, good company.”

“I see.”

********* 

Their first hint that they had found Nantauk was a voice, belting a raucous song somewhere up ahead. Xellos, listening, hesitated. “My, my, do you suppose she's entertaining company now?” 

Swallow tilted her head to one side, and then said, “I don't think so. It's coming from over there, and the train-rest is over there. Besides, she usually uses that one as a work-song. I told you she was well-read.” Swallow added, after another minute or two, “that song is actually a very old one; no one knows what the lyrics mean anymore. We call that rhythm Fours and Five in the Valley; we use it mostly for sacred things, but this one does sound as if this one meant something rude, doesn't it?”

_Anso Aichum,_ sang the voice ahead of them,  
 _Pintu deier,_  
 _Buddai mistat bran_  
 _Chawey apdair_

Xellos smiled. “Not as rude as it sounds, actually, but very old indeed. That's a song from the Lost Cities.”

“Oh.” After another moment or two, Swallow's curiosity got the better of her. “So what is it about, really?”

Xellos tilted his head slightly and tapped his chin with his index finger. “Well, that is not a simple question when you're talking about poetry, but it tells a story of meeting and escaping a bear, with a number of implausible embellishments. For instance, sometimes the bear is wearing shoes.”

Swallow shuddered. “Not a song I would choose for working alone in the forest, then. In the Valley, Bear keeps the house of Rain and Death.”

“Oh, but the first people to sing it mostly did so when they were out in the woods, and in a rowdy mood. Very few of them had ever seen an actual bear,” Xellos added.

Swallow frowned in confusion. “Why sing about something you never saw?” 

Xellos shrugged carelessly. “People do, you know.”

Swallow shook off the bear's shadow and returned to her previously cheerful mood. “You'll have to tell Nantauk about what those words mean; she'll be interested.” The voice in the wood was chanting, _di-en, di-en_ , still to the same tune, and moving closer. Swallow cupped her hands around her mouth and raised her own voice. “So you are here, Nantauk!”

The voice floated back: “Ah Hoy!” and then a long stream of percussive words in one of the Folded Hills languages, followed by the protesting bray of a donkey.

“I still don't speak Fennen, Nantauk,” Swallow bellowed in response, “Speak TOK, will you?”

The answering syllables came nearer, accompanied by snapping twigs, and then suddenly resolved themselves into understandable TOK. “Swallow! Swallow of the Wine People! What in the name of the Ten Volcanoes are you doing here?”

The woman who emerged from the trees certainly looked more like a lumberjack than she did a courtesan. Though she had an attractive figure and moved with some grace, her clothes were hempen, of no particular color, her hair braided and tucked behind a scarf, and her cheerful face was scratched and smeared with dirt. Swallow ran toward her, smiling, and the two of them embraced, briefly. Fefinum and Natauk's donkey eyed each other.

“What on earth did you do to your face?” Nantauk demanded, running a finger lightly over the scar on Swallow's cheek, and then she noticed Xellos for the first time. “And who's this? One of the Falares people?”

That question had come more frequently the further away from the Falares islands they got; the islanders were, it seemed, famous for their pallor and their seamanship, and so Xellos, a light-skinned traveler, might fit the mold as well as anyone, assuming one had not ever actually met an islander. 

It seemed that Nantauk had, though, because she went on, “I don't think I've ever seen a clean-shaven Falares man before, and I've certainly never seen one with eyes that funny, light color.”

Swallow took a breath. Xellos waited, with some curiosity, to see what she would – or wouldn't – say about the scar. Its appearance had coincided with the Carrion Gyre and the death of the City of Mind, which Swallow was trying so hard to disengage from. 

For now, she sidestepped. “Nantauk, this is Xellos Coyote's Son, of the Mazokude. I'd never heard of them either, but they mostly seem to live somewhere a long way to the east of the Range of Heaven. Xellos came here with some other people from over that way, and he decided to stay a while longer when they turned back. And the others were all pale, with odd-colored eyes, too, so I think it's just the way things are over there. I guess they don't do beards either, because Xellos was one of three men with the group, and I never saw any of them with hair on their faces.”

“Ah. So?” Nantauk looked Xellos over from foot to head, smiling lasciviously, hand on her hip. She tossed her braids. “Welcome, my friend's friend, I _so_ look forward to making your acquaintance.” 

The Puppy stirred a bit, but Xellos sensed no actual lust in the woman's emotions, just curiosity. He rather fancied that flirtation was her default style. He batted his eyes at her and intoned, piously, “Swallow tells me you are very well-read.”

Nantauk cracked a laugh. “Not bad, not bad,” she said, “Come on back with us to the train-rest, and we can all talk.”

So they talked, settling themselves on upended logs around small fire of pine wood in the clearing by the train-rest. There was a little cabin there where Nantauk slept, attached to a much larger building that served as a stable or woodshed depending on the season, but it was too small and stuffy for company. Nantauk had a bottle of Valley wine that they passed around between them with their meal: rabbit stew and flat rounds of corn batter fried on a griddle. Swallow did most of the talking this time, after the first spates of news between both women. No-one had told Nantauk the latest about the Exchanges yet, but she seemed less interested in that than the traders in Divoo had been - “Well, we're figuring out the train schedules, and I never used the exchanges for anything else.” She was much more eager to hear about Swallow's travels, and Swallow was happy to oblige her.

“The Klatsaand people use wheat flour for almost all their baking; it's so strange! Their breads have a texture I haven't seen anywhere else – chewy, like very tender lamb, almost, but light, with all these little bubbles and holes inside like an omelet. It took me forever to get used to it, and now it's taking forever to stop missing it.” The Klatsaand people took another twenty minutes before Swallow got around to the story of running into “the people from the east.” Once she got on to the subject, her summary of the ensuing months' adventures was a masterwork of distraction. Her descriptions were vivid: Gourry and Lina were “like a sheepdog trying to herd a bluejay,” and Zelgadis “carried his tragedy around like a _hehole-no;_ every now and then he'd take it out and polish it.” Her anecdotes were lively: Xellos found himself being sorry he'd missed the “silly” fight with some Ailkrye adolescents over a wild-dog hunt. And she managed the whole story without mentioning magic at all. _She's really quite good at that,_ Xellos decided. _It makes me wonder why more mazoku don't choose traders for their pact-thralls. Well, some of them do, I suppose – those heads of merchant guilds had to start somewhere, after all._

“And what about Coyote's Son, there?” Nantauk asked. “He's a quiet one, isn't he?”

“Quiet and dangerous,” Swallow agreed, smiling, in dead earnest. “And listening to him when he does speak seems to lead one into trouble more often than not. He has said that in his home country he was a warrior and a spy, and also that he is done with that work now; I can only hope the second part is true, assuming the first part was.”

“Are you two....”

“A couple? No.” Swallow frowned at her hands. “We... we are going on together, each of us for our own reasons, and making up the rest as we go along.”

Nantauk looked at Xellos. “That's a fair enough description,” he purred, “so far as it goes.”

“Ah?” Nantauk looked back at Swallow. “And how far does it go, my friend? Does it have anything to do with that scar on your face? You didn't get that from a wild dog or a drunkard; it almost looks like a tattoo. And you haven't said a word about it, yet.”

Xellos watched Swallow wrestling with herself: prudence, fear, a human desire to share trouble, a human desire to keep dangerous things unspoken. He kept his own face fixed in an expression of mild concern. 

“Ohhh,” Swallow said at last, “I think I will have to learn for another year before I know how to tell that story properly. Very little of it belongs in the Five Houses of the Earth, and the rest...” She drew a breath and squared her shoulders. “The rest is a secret,” she finished apologetically. Xellos grinned into the dark.

********

They went on, following the Line. They did not encounter other railroad workers after Nantauk; Swallow told him many of them were of a solitary disposition and disliked meeting strangers, and so would make themselves scarce at the sound of approaching company. The gentler slopes of the Folded Hills were much more heavily settled than the abrupt terrain of the volcano country; even the forests could not be called 'wilderness,' being as assiduously tended as the hunting preserve of a great estate. The Folded Hills People, as Swallow called them, were five or six different tribes of farmers, all of them “just different enough to be a scandal when they marry each other,” and all of them inclined to be suspicious of outsiders, thanks in part to two or three nomadic tribes that ranged among them and occasionally worked themselves up into a raid. Swallow was usually able to talk them through without much difficulty, but as they moved into the higher, craggier mountains again, she declared herself relieved. “They're not bad, those people,” she announced, “but oh, they're fussy! I complain about Tachas Touchas being hidebound and confining, but the Folded Hills are much worse. At least in Tachas Touchas we let the wild country stay wild, and we're not afraid to look a coyote in the eye now and then.”

“Or even take one by the hand,” Xellos smiled. 

Swallow choked on a laugh, then turned thoughtful. “No,” she told him, “we'll do that, now and then, as you know. But not without fear.”

“You do not need to be afraid of me.”

“Maybe not physically.”

********

Swallow woke Xellos before dawn one morning by yanking his blankets off him. “We need to pack up quickly, Coyote's Son.”

Xellos muttered and rubbed his face, started to ask why, and then didn't as he grew more fully awake and the answer became obvious. It was _not_ actually before dawn. The darkness of the sky was heavy cloud, ready to start pouring at any moment. Swallow checked her boots for spiders or scorpions and then put them on without putting on her trousers first. After frowning thoughtfully at the sky, she pulled her tunic off over her head. At his questioning croak, she looked at him. 

“It's not very cold today. Skin dries quicker than anything else we might wear.” Swallow wrapped a scarf around her waist and hips, partly for modesty, perhaps, but Xellos suspected its main purpose was to cushion her leather tool belt. The fabric emphasized the bottom it covered possibly more than complete nudity would have.

“Ah.” Xellos pulled off his own shirt but put his trousers on. He wanted the pockets, if nothing else.

He saw Swallow looking at him. With some appreciation, he hoped. “Ah,” she said in turn. “You do have a navel. I kind of assumed you did, once I saw that your feet had some calluses on them that first morning, but I wasn't sure.”

“Which means what?”

She shrugged. “The same thing it always means, I suppose: you and your mother are separate people.” She added, as she began loading Fefinum, “In Kastoha and the other upper valley towns, sometimes they say someone who is naive for their age, or too much under their mother's thumb, is 'still wet around the navel.' ” 

“Hm.” And they began another day's march. 

The rain began falling mid-morning, in large, heavy drops that pattered among the leaves like castanets, left widely scattered pockmarks along the verge of the Line, and splashed on the rails. The air was, as Swallow had said it would be, on the warm side; warm enough at least to not be troublesome to two (or three, if you counted Fefinum) people moving fast enough to smell slightly of sweat, if not to actually drip. The air had a soft feel to it, as if one were continually brushing through a silk curtain, all the way down the trail. The raindrops, in this scheme, were cold glass beads on the curtain. As the storm grew heavier, Xellos lost any sense of chill from the falling water, and felt only a hundred thousand tiny blows – or were they strokes? – against his bare skin. Some ancient bard from the Lost Cities had begun a poem by saying "Let the Rain Kiss you," and the words occurred to Xellos now, though he dismissed them shortly thereafter. Water dripped into his eyes from his bangs, and he brushed them back, discovering that they had grown enough to be quite irritating when wet, but not quite long enough to stay behind his ears. But the rain helped keep the wayward hairs in place. His skin felt alive and tingling, as it had the first day after the Carrion Gyre, registering every shift and tap. It was... not disagreeable.

Swallow, ahead of him, also seemed to be enjoying the simple, sensory pleasures the rain had to offer, tilting her face up into it from time to time, and, like him, running her fingers through her hair, which was settling from frizz into ringlets as wet strands clung together. Now and then she adjusted her toolbelt so that the weight of the pouch favored one hip or the other. The scarf she had wrapped around her waist clung to her bottom. Overall, the girl looked better naked than clothed. Freed from her dusty green husk of a tunic, she was round and brown and smooth as a chestnut, her motions purposeful and tidy, like a beetle's. The solid bounce of her muscles as she walked invited, not a lingering gaze, but a firm slap, as to a horse's haunches. The sparkles of rain and the shifting light-and-shadow patterns of the forest on her skin made it look plushy. _Are We Thinking About Sex Now!?_ “Yes,” Xellos murmured to The Puppy, “I rather think we are.”

Their mutual plans for the evening formed without much discussion. A little time after recognizing his desire for what it was, Xellos felt the echo of it in the woman walking ahead of him, and a shift of her mood as she, too, sensed the answering echo from him. _This could escalate very quickly._ Swallow turned and walked backward for a moment – she was superstitious about looking over her shoulder, when she remembered to be – catching his eye, her mouth in a humorous quirk. Then slowly, her expression still mischievous, she deliberately ran both her hands through her hair, squeezing some of the water out of it and, at the same time, lifting her breasts forward. “Your trousers aren't chafing you too badly, are they, Coyote's Son?”

He answered with a sharp grin. “How far is it to the train-rest, exactly?

“Oh, perhaps another hour.”

“And then, I suppose, we will spend another two hours collecting green branches for bedding, and perhaps starting a cookfire?”

She grinned back at him. “And spreading out some of our gear to dry, and rubbing Fefinum down, and perhaps seeing if our boots need mending. But I thought we might get a late start tomorrow, if it's still raining. Or even just stay at the train-rest for an extra day.”

“Well,” Xellos chirped, “In that case perhaps the boots could wait?”

“Perhaps.” Swallow turned back around, but raised her voice a bit to continue, “Perhaps if I open a door to the Eighth House, a wind will gather the branches for us, and blow some of the water droplets out of our gear, so we could get to bed early.”

“Do you think so? Well, but you might need that wind later, you know.”

Swallow turned around and looked at him again. “Do you really think you're going to be as happy as that?”

He shrugged. “One can always hope.”

“Can you, now. Well, if you're worried about running out of wind, I can always add extra beans to the succotash tonight.”

Xellos took a moment to parse that one, and then snickered. The Puppy had, somewhere along the line, gone back to sleep, but he'd wake up again, Xellos had no doubt. Swallow, ahead of him, began to hum, and Xellos recognized the tune from a night two or three months back when he'd slipped an aphrodisiac into the soup. The Inverse had gotten pregnant, that night, freeing her powers from their menstrual drain, to Lord Beastmaster's benefit. Zelgadis' wavering determination to search for a cure had been rekindled too, ditto. And, when Xellos had found Swallow in stable that night, she'd been singing the same song: 

_If the word is yes,_   
_if the word is yes, yes...._

That time, she'd kicked him out after a brief conversation and, he supposed, taken matters into her own hands after he left. This time would be different.

The train-rest turned out to be one of the untenanted ones, undersupplied with everything but fuel and water. Half the mule stalls had been stacked with drying wood. Still, they only needed two stalls at most, and they had their own supplies. It would do. Swallow, as threatened, did insist on attending to all the usual camp chores and a few more; she built up the fire enough to heat both her kettles- the one with the succotash and a second one with water. She called on her magic for most of it, though. Magic to sweep the litter off the floors of their chosen stalls. Magic to shape the cookfire, magic to cut down masses of springy underbrush as if with a dragon’s claw, for Fefinum's bedding and their own. Magic to collect and break apart a couple of “dead hangers” as she called them – dry branches that had not fallen to the ground – to replace the wood they were taking. Xellos, working more slowly and conserving his energy, contemplated the demonstration with growing delight, both for the immediate and the longer-term implications. “The water's warm, Coyote's Son,” Swallow called, “Come help me wash the trail dust off.”

Xellos thought the preliminaries went very well. Swallow addressed technical issues with her usual shattering frankness (“I've got my diaphragm in, but if you prefer condoms I have them, too”) and easygoing temper. Their mutual ablutions by the fire were a fine way to explore each other's surfaces, though Xellos would not have complained had the amount of hot water available octupled. And below the surface... humans tended to approach sex with strong mixed emotions; the peppery heat of pleasure and (usually) triumph balanced by the sweetness of fear. There was almost always at least a little fear, especially at the beginning. This time, the heat was as welcome as the sweetness, and the familiar mix helped him attend to Swallow's experience when his own new skin was trying to flood his brain out completely. He pulled her in more aggressively, tangling his fingers in the soft, small-scale chaos of her hair, his other hand pressing into the flesh of her back. That hint of fear spiked briefly. Swallow set both of her hands on his shoulders and reared back a little to look in his face. “This is fine,” she told him, “but I need you to leave both my arms free to move at all times.”

“All right.” He didn't need to guess at the origins of this command in Swallow's case, since she had told the story before. The truth was, though, that many if not most humans set up arbitrary boundaries like this – a kind of mental clothing: _I am naked here before you; I know that you could harm me easily. Do this one thing to show me your good faith._ Xellos nearly always respected those arbitrary boundaries. Unspoken demonstrations of good faith were his favorite kind. So much the better when they had no actual connection to whatever trust he really intended to violate.

Once they moved from fire to bedroll, though, the game stalled. Xellos had never imagined there could be any subset of bedroom activity for which his knowledge was insufficient. In times past, he had played the Demon Lover, the Broken Flower, the Corruptible Innocent, the Icicle with a Molten Core... anything that might persuade someone with secrets or other valuable commodities to trust him, or believe themselves helpless to deny him. But, he realized with mild surprise, his targets had all been people for whom the Demon Lover, etc. were meaningful concepts. And he, himself, had almost never been as relaxed or trusting as he appeared in any of those encounters. As a toolkit for approaching a woman who knew what he was feeling as exactly as he knew for her, and for whom sex appeared to be an experiment in mutuality of slightly less significance than singing in the same drum circle, several centuries of incubus work suddenly seemed woefully inadequate.

“Too much in your head, Xellos?” Swallow propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him with sympathy. “There's no hurry, you know.” The Puppy disagreed. But...

“That may be it,” he admitted. “Most of the times I've done this, I had an agenda.” He did this time, too. Just less specific than usual. He wanted Swallow tied to him sexually so that when the time came for more difficult changes, she would find it harder to deny him. Also, of course, the Puppy wanted to play, though it had started to sulk again just at the moment.

“Spying.” Already her distaste for the word was starting to wear down, Xellos thought. She still didn't like it, but the idea no longer provoked a gut reaction. “So,” Swallow went on, “What did you do when you were among your own people?”

“On Wolfpack Island? There were always agendas there, too.”

“Always? Sounds exhausting.” 

“Exhausting? Never! Just the opposite.” His eyes grew unfocused as he remembered. “The peril makes one more alive. You see and note everything; every flicker, every dust speck, and hold yourself ready to act at every moment, thinking with your whole mind to make sure you go your way and not someone else's. It's not a place for rest, but for becoming.” 

The Inverse and most of his other acquaintances would have been surprised to hear him speak so unguardedly. Maybe it was the Puppy's influence. Or perhaps an instinctive understanding that this Pact-thrall would not be drawn in by the usual promises of power and revenge, and needed different bait.

However he had come to it, Swallow took in his panegyric quietly, without any noticeable change in her own mood, idly running the fingers of one hand through his hair and behind his ear. “Oh,” she said, “That one. I see.” Then she straightened the arm she was leaning on, levering herself up until she looked down at him instead of on the level. “In that case, maybe I should remind you of how much danger you're in, here in this time and place.”

Xellos chuckled. “Well, yes, you could kill me with a thought and a snap of your fingers. But I don't believe you're going to.”

She sighed. “If you ever want that, Xellos, all you have to do is ask. But it isn't the Bear you're afraid of, is it? Have you thought, Coyote's Son, that coming inland with me might _change_ you?” Her smile broadened, showing her teeth. “Suppose the channel between us opens in the other direction?” She ran her fingernails gently down his torso, pausing at his boneless, vulnerable belly, and tickling him briskly, making him yelp and kick out one of his legs. She swung her leg over him and knelt there straddling him. “If I fill you with a river of human trust and joy, as I have taken in your power and rage, what then?”

Xellos could hear his own heartbeat again. It was quite rapid. He shivered. Swallow's hands landed on top of his head again, with commanding firmness. Some piece of him tried to snap to attention and cower submissively at the same time. The Puppy was on full alert. Swallow's fingers raked through his hair, down the back of his head, then clenched around a hank of hair at the nape of his neck. She tugged, forcing his head back and his chin up, baring his throat. He shaped his lips to meet hers, then trembled again when she didn't kiss him but instead ran her tongue up his neck and under his chin, nipping him gently at the corner of his jaw. It was only then, as he heard his own whimpering, canine moan, that he fully understood where Swallow was getting her moves from. And why he was responding so strongly.

“You clever bitch,” he whispered, delighted. The words had no pejorative edge, in Kesh. He sat up and wrestled Swallow back into the springy branches. And then, for a time, there was nothing but panting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had way too much fun with Nantauk's song. For those of you who didn't learn it in Scouts, you can find the original at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMzmSnQjEdY. How that song survives Western Civilization I couldn't tell you, but it's nor more random than "Sumer Is Icumin In," really.


	4. Further Negotiations

From that point on, they copulated once or twice a quarter-moon, as energy and privacy permitted. Swallow found the practice comfortingly familiar, or so she said: a simple pleasure among many new complexities. Xellos... Xellos sought oblivion. Tuned in physically and emotionally, their joining seemed so powerful that it might yet undo the greater fissure between his old existence and the current one. From the bridge of their mutual desire, it almost seemed possible to touch the lost part of himself that had lodged itself in Swallow's soul, to gather it in and make it his own again. As the climax neared, he could almost believe his coarse, powerless body was ready to dissolve once more into its constituent atoms, letting Xellos move through the material world as a wave, touching it only when he chose. But the wave always broke. Xellos would emerge gasping on the shore, hearing the heartbeat thudding in the ears, as he had heard it in those first few days after the Carrion Gyre, before he learned how to ignore it. The wound of exile would crack open, stinging, as the body lay spent among the blankets, too weak and heavy to move. Always, for a few minutes, Xellos would wonder why he tortured himself so with these false evocations of the world he had lost. He would resolve to commit to more prosaic and less transcendent experiences. But then would come a day when The Puppy woke up every half-hour, and the longing would overwhelm him again. Besides, how could he keep training his Pact-thrall if he pretended he had always been human?

The rains came more frequently; soft, misty ones that made no sound, or heavy chill ones that made walking a misery. The hills grew greener, though the difference would not have been dramatic to anyone transported freshly from the lush regions around Seyruun. Swallow, Xellos, and Fefinum left the rail line to follow other footpaths as they moved into more familiar territory, and as the risk of being surprised by one of the faster, 'grasshopper' engines – so called for their leggy pistons and their tendency to start moving with a great jerk like a leap – grew higher. The streams they splashed across often held huge net bags of leaching acorns that turned the water brown as tea. The ubiquitous succotash vanished with startling abruptness, to be replaced by soups thickened with acorn flour, or the same flour cooked into eggy rounds of pan bread and used to scoop up the rest of the meal. (“Don't worry, _binyez,”_ Swallow assured him, _“Everyone_ farts a lot for the first moon or so after people switch over to rainy-season food.”) The number of people who had heard of the Na valley, or the “wine people” rose, as did the number of people who knew Swallow by name.

This second circumstance engendered, to Xellos' perceptions, considerable internal tension. Swallow no longer flinched openly whenever anyone mentioned the Exchanges. To inquiries about the white spiral graven in her cheek, she said, “A great power came to the time and place where we were. I don't understand it all myself yet.” It was almost as good a way to deflect inquiry while arousing curiosity as saying 'that is a secret,' and Xellos approved. But she was far from relaxed, either. The days after they left one little town or another, she always seemed to cling to Fefinum the harder, and shy away from Xellos. And she usually cried, silently and without any fuss, so plainly inclined to keep her grief as private as possible that Xellos did not make inquiries. Swallow was not amenable to even the most indirect kind of astral training on the mornings after they left a town.

Finally, in a period Xellos marked as mid-November and Swallow called “after the Grass,” they came to a “big town” (because “city,” in Kesh, was a very technical term, applied to the now-defunct Exchanges and to certain undesirable cultural patterns) called Stoy, on the shores of Clear Lake, and stayed put for several days. Stoy, it seemed, was a railway terminus, and Swallow had made enough friends there over the years to make a longer stay a social necessity. Moreover, she explained, there was a direct rail line from Stoy to Kastoha, the second-northernmost of the nine towns of the Na Valley. (Wakwaha, culturally more prominent and home to the Exchange, when there had been one, was situated higher in the hills, at the springs of the south-flowing Na: not good terrain for a railway.) The trains moved with some regularity during the rainy season. Swallow hoped the three of them might be able to hitch a ride. Or, if the cars were too full to accommodate a mule on no notice, she could at least send word home by way of the Finders working on the train.

That was all well and good, except that between social obligations (dinners, mostly, since everyone had work to do) Swallow slipped away. She left Xellos to his own devices for the first time since their journey had begun, and mourned. The first day or two, she had spent in one of Stoy's communal stables. This was, she explained, partly by way of paying for their keep during their stay. Xellos reminded himself that Swallow had first come to the Finders by way of the Doctors' Lodge, as a veterinarian. Still, the beasts here had their own caretakers, and horsey people, in Xellos' experience, were willing to leave their care in others' hands only to a point. Even in the unlikely event that Stoy's own veterinarians were neglecting this stable, there should not have been enough work to keep Swallow there a full day, unless she sought it out. When Xellos tracked her down to remind her to wash for supper, she was running a currycomb along the flank of an elderly donkey, which stood there flop-eared and drooling in equine bliss. Xellos looked around and saw that the hides of every horse and mule in the stable gleamed with brushing and oil, and that several pieces of tack and one or two stalls showed signs of recent preventative maintenance.

He forbore comment, but when, the day after that, he found her in another barn, motionless under the weight of two small cats, her hair having acquired a considerable fraction of the haystack she sat in, her eyes red (again) with recent weeping, he crouched beside her. “What is all this, Swallow?”

Swallow took several deep, slow breaths. She stroked the black cat between the ears. It emitted a rattling purr. “I never really understood before,” she said quietly, “how unhappy humans are most of the time. Maybe not everyone,” she added hastily, “and not all the time, but everyone, for a few heartbeats every hour, and five times as often as they say, at least, and...” 

_Oh. That one._ Xellos did not smirk, but Swallow could doubtless pick up on his rising satisfaction if she were attending. “This must not be a complete surprise to you, surely? Your own experience will tell you how much quicker you are to share happiness than sorrow.”

Swallow shrugged. “Before, I could attend, or not, depending on the rules I was working within. And when it's just your feelings and Fefinum's I'm picking up, I mostly can still handle it. You spend more time thinking than feeling anyway; you're too old to get riled up easily. Here, I know – whether I ask or not, I know – how people feel, but not why, or what I can do to help, or whether I should do anything or just leave it be. And a whole town full of people adds up. I get so d-damned cold...” Swallow curled inward, biting her lip, and then sighed. “So I'm hiding in the barns,” she concluded, “I know how to make the four-legged people happy.” The tabby cat flopped itself backward off her knee and exposed its belly to be rubbed. Swallow obliged. 

Though he could sympathize with the disorientation, Xellos decided that what the girl needed most to do was begin letting go of the human principles she clung to and embrace what she was becoming. That, in turn, would speed up the acclimatization process. He leaned in toward her until his breath should tickle her cheek and lowered his voice, “But can you not also taste the sweetness of it?” he prodded.

“Can I _what?”_ Swallow sounded offended, but she smelled confused. 

Xellos patted her shoulder. “I know it's new to you, but it does little good to deny your senses, my acorn; your training may be to move away from negativity, or try to change it, but now you have a mazoku piece to your soul. While your heart sorrows at the pain of the world, your mouth fills with the taste of honey and roses.”

Swallow remained blank. “Roses? Acorn?” After a moment's concentration she shook her head decidedly. “No, nothing like that. No taste at all, really. I thought I'd said something about what it was like earlier, but maybe you weren't attending: the power that comes from you is heavy and flowing, like water. And it's cold. Sometimes it feels more sticky, or oily. It grows thinner and warmer when you're in a good mood. And from other people, it is like wind: warm or cold, something I can feel, but not touch. Sometimes there is a smell,” Swallow went on, musing, “I'm guessing, though I don't know, that it has to do with whether the person is feeling something chronic, or new. Back at that train-rest in the Folded Hills, when Nantauk was complaining about her brother, as she does every time I visit, there was a wind in my soul that felt as though it had wisps of fog in it, and there was a smell like potatoes in a cellar. Later, when I wouldn't tell her about the Carrion Gyre, she was hurt and a little angry, and there was that same wind, but the smell was greener and fresher.”

“Ah,” said Xellos, “Hum. I'm going to need to think about that one.”

Swallow heaved herself up from the haystack, receiving glances of squiffy indignation from the two cats, and began combing straw from her hair with her fingers. “What is there to think?”

************

As Swallow predicted, word arrived (by heliograph, apparently) that a train from the Valley was coming to Stoy, sending Swallow into another vortex of nerves and dithering. She roped Xellos in on a stormy evening, when there had been little to do after supper but go to bed. Since their roommates in the railway dormitory (also traders, from the marshes somewhere) decided that, actually, no, there was a lot of drinking to do before turning in, the first thing to do was take advantage of the privacy, but it was early enough that afterward, Swallow wanted to talk.

“We should discuss what we are going to tell people about us,” she insisted. “I have preferences, but there are other possibilities, and it is a decision with long-term implications.”

Xellos stretched, then shrugged his way back under their blanket. “I am always in favor of saying as little as possible,” he said. “What kind of implications?”

“Where in the life of the town you'll fit in, and how much freedom we'll have to do what, and things like that. For instance, if I were to suggest you were a friend who might someday come in as a brother of the Serpentine –“

Xellos snorted. “A bit late for that, don't you think?” He tweaked her briefly under her ribs.

Swallow twitched but did not squeak. “Well, yes, but we probably shouldn't say we've gotten married, either, nor plan to dance the Wedding Night this spring. The people of my grandmothers' generation, especially, get very nervous about foreigners marrying in, after all the trouble with the Condor People that happened when they were young. We don't want to force the issue.”

Xellos nodded understanding.

“Besides,” Swallow went on, “maybe you'll find you'd rather marry someone else.”

Xellos blinked. “Too late for that, too, isn't it? We are bound, Swallow. We've already tried going our separate ways, and our bodies won't let us.”

Swallow sat up, the better to gesture emphatically without cracking Xellos with a stray elbow. “Well, but I've been experimenting. The pull doesn't get noticeable until we're nearly a mile apart, and at that distance the headaches don't start for hours. We could easily manage that and still live in separate households in the same town, running across each other from time to time in the fields and the lodges and the wash-house...” 

Xellos waved this wistful vision away with three long fingers. “Seems needlessly complicated to me. Why are you so reluctant to call me husband? Did you have someone else in mind for the role?”

Swallow's answering wince suggested strongly that she did, but she growled, “No,” and then sighed and rubbed her forehead, and then the scar in her cheek. “No, that was over before I left for the Klatsaand country. There was a Yellow Adobe boy called Careful; we came inland together, but I think he mostly wanted to get out of his mothers' household. He was friends with my chosen-sister Hazelnut and her brother Silver, their mother liked him, and I was still something of a whirlpool – easy enough to use my bed to get in the door of the household we were sharing. But we were both making up that world, he and I; it didn't last. Still, it really is too early for the two of us to marry, either. People at home will be much less inclined to take against you if they're allowed to think you might go away again.”

Xellos very much hoped they would be going away again, and not just on trading trips. Ideally, Swallow would realize for herself that she had changed too much to remain in the Na Valley forever, and once she was cut off from her roots, she would be much easier to manipulate. But it was too early to cut her off yet. Not when their twisted Pact had gifted her with all the coercive power she could bring herself to use. He did not want to get her in the habit of using it against him until he had trained her to use it appropriately, in the furtherance of the Mazoku cause, which meant it would be unwise to bring to her attention the fact that she could use it against him. Not yet, at least. Of course, once she was properly Turned, she would most certainly use it against him, to keep him in pain and anguish and use him as a source of more power. His last decade or four of existence were likely to be tortuous. _But then, since when has my comfort been of first concern?_

So he kept teasing her. “I suppose it's inaccurate to call our relationship a marriage,” he said. “The mazoku term is 'thralldom,' but we're not quite following Mazoku patterns, either, and besides, you're not likely to win any friends in the Valley by calling it that.” The Kesh did have a word – it parsed out as “gift-slavery” – that meant something like thrall, which they used primarily to describe romantic or mentoring relationships that other people did not approve of. It would be like going among the straitlaced Folded Hills people and introducing oneself as a “grass widow.”

Swallow's disgust, filtered through human senses, had the most _peculiar_ flavor to it; the familiar tang was there, but so was a stomach-churning something else. The result was something like durian fruit; both obviously objectionable and strangely addictive.

“It's obscene,” she said, “but the word that best describes the degree of mutuality in the bond is _iyakwun.”_

Xellos appreciated the irony. _Iyakwun_ was the word for the love that was greater than the self; it was used, most commonly, for mothers and children. Swallow used it when talking about how she loved her home country. It was the unbreakable bond. 

“Hm. Yes, you people don't really have a word for a high degree of connection without--” He stopped, groped, and then stuttered mentally as he realized there was no Kesh word for _love._ For different types of love, they had words. Family feeling was _unne._ Romantic love was _lamawenun,_ which parsed out as “coveting sex” but got used for chaste puppy-love, too. There were other words for other kinds of pleasure and desire, but no word for the thing they had in common. “– without kindness,” he finally concluded. “But I imagine people whose neighbors think they're in a state of gift-slavery often believe themselves to be practicing _iyakwun._ Is that not so?”

Swallow nodded slowly, making a doubtful noise in her throat.

“Well then, _giyakwunshe_ it is! Or rather, _giyakwunshed_ we are. People will think we're being silly and melodramatic, but that's their problem, not ours.”

“Gnrrg.” Swallow clutched her head. _“Why_ can't you just lie, Xellos?” she complained.

“Beneath my dignity,” Xellos answered promptly, “and also, to use your word, obscene. Mazoku are destroyers,” he reminded her. “We understand that the gods who made the world were acting wrongly, that the state of being is that of being riven away from our mother chaos and trapped in patterns and illusions. And, as you say in Kesh, to lie is to make yet another world within the world. We destroyers will not do that.” And now, having cursed Kesh vocabulary less than a minute ago, he blessed Kesh grammatical forms, because they allowed for two versions of the word “we:” the one that set “us” apart from the person one was speaking to, and the one that included her. Which allowed Xellos, in his lecture, to include Swallow among the destroyers. 

************

And so, when the train arrived and Swallow and Xellos were making their acquaintance of the crew, he smiled his smug, infuriating smile, and called her _giyakwunshe._ Swallow would have found this embarrassing enough had the train crew been people she knew well, but they were all relative strangers; a couple of adolescent boys from Chumo, under the guidance of a married pair of women from Telina that Swallow hadn't seen in years and had never talked to much. They spent a good deal of time in the first day in the ritual of affirming connection – one of the boys, Black Ram, was a brother of the Serpentine, and descended from a cousin of Hazelnut's mother who had married an Obsidian man in Chumo, and the other, Deep, was friends with the son of one of the Finders Swallow had traveled with. The two older women already knew enough to be going on with, though Further, the gruffer of the two, remembered her as “that girl who had the trouble with the Pig People,” a particularly unwelcome reminder just at the moment.

Swallow told herself firmly that Further really had little right or business to interfere or cast judgment on her current relationship with Coyote's Son, but of course that wouldn't stop her, and of course it _did_ matter, because attending to other people's business was, in its way, the glue that held the Valley together and apart – if one wasn't mindful of one's neighbors, whoever they happened to be right then, then one might as well be a Forest-living person out alone on the Hunting Side of town or beyond it, with no-one to call on for help when things went wrong. And if there weren't differences of opinion about other people and their lives, than what was there to talk about? And what was the point of having other people if everyone approved of the same things? But none of that made tight-lipped frowns and audible sniffs any easier to bear. The Finders' Lodge had been Swallow's refuge against similar disapproval from the more conservative element in the Valley, but even the Finders' Lodge had its limits.

An actual, rather than theoretical, _giyakwunshe_ might have been a comfort even in the face of such disapproval. Xellos was... not comforting. Provoking, was what he was. And obscure. “I used to introduce myself as Xellos the Mysterious Priest, but I'm not really a Priest anymore,” was his response to the first getting-to-know-you probes. After that, he smiled blandly and refused to answer questions, doubling both the number and duration of Further's suspicious glances at a stroke. Swallow tried to push him toward being more sociable, to no avail. “You don't have a lot to give except stories right now,” she explained, “and you need to pay something to gain trust. You're going to need that trust.”

“Ah, yes. Trust is the real currency in most societies. Very perceptive of you, Swallow. And at the moment I'm living on your capital, am I not? I do appreciate your generosity.” And then he'd offered to teach her a calming spell for Fefinum, who liked the train not at all. Not the earthquake rumble under her hooves, nor the galloping speed, nor the constant smell of burning. Swallow had dropped the other matter, because Fefinum was more important, but Further's wife, She Tries, cornered her later at the train-rest privy and demanded, “What kind of man are you bringing to the Valley, woman of the Serpentine? What is he hiding?”

“He used to be a slave,” Swallow had told her, “and I don't know if he can be brought in or not. But he and I took hands in the Hawk's house, and neither of us knows how to let go again. I'm hoping the scholars at the heyimas in Wakwaha-on-the-mountain will be able to help.” Xellos, when they all joined up with each other for supper, had smiled and been silent.

The train itself was able to quell him a bit, at least. He and Swallow were welcome additions to the firebox rotation: hot, sweaty work that nonetheless required a certain degree of expertise to keep the boiler from misbehaving. Xellos took up his duties without complaint, shoveling in olive pits, acorn shells, and eucalyptus wood at a steady, graceful pace, and then nearly toppling over into the box himself by the end of his first stint because he'd forgotten to keep himself hydrated. She Tries made him sit out his next rotation, but even so he finished the day looking much the worst of any of the six of them. His hands, arms, and face were pink with exertion and spotted with burns from flying smuts; the sweat-streaked dirt that marked them all stood out against his pale skin, and if he smiled, it was hidden by his lank hair as his head drooped forward. He radiated, from every inch, a pathetic air of besmirched fragility. She Tries, who had a motherly streak, hovered over him, and he seemed to be enjoying the attention.

Which irritated Swallow. She could tell, from the flow in the channel between them, that he was not as miserable as he looked; was he acting to make other people feel sorry for him? Was she imagining it? Or could she be imagining, instead, the appearance of weakness? Swallow was drawn to weakness; maybe she was making up the fragility where the others saw, perhaps, nothing, to explain why she was, in spite of everything, still drawn to Xellos. Or maybe he wasn't acting at all, but simply exhausted. He was strong enough in the ordinary way of things, but firebox duty was of another order of intensity than their usual hiking and camping routine, and besides, the engine had been designed for sustained work by people that averaged out a good head shorter than he was. He had had to bend further, each time he fed another load into the box, and stoop every time he stood up so as not to bang his head.

Swallow pushed the whole tangle away. _I'm asking the wrong question._ Xellos' mind was a very old and complicated one. There was absolutely no reason genuine exhaustion, genuine self-pity, and aesthetic pleasure at the pitiful image he presented and its effect on his audience couldn't all coexist, like the layers of meat and onions and meal in that baked dish the Forty Forks River people made when they wanted to use up leftover flatbread. Swallow took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders, stretching her back muscles. _And it doesn't really matter at all. So he thinks- or doesn't think- he's winning some kind of game. If I'm not playing, what difference does it make?_

************

Xellos volunteered to take his turn at the firebox at the point where the train would be approaching Kesh territory, the better to allow the others to crane their necks from various apertures and watch the landscape grow more familiar. Even so, he knew when the rest of the group spotted Ama Kulkun, Grandmother Mountain, that sat at the top end of the Valley and held the springs of the Na river, because the simultaneous blast of joy from both ends of the little train overwhelmed the medicinal smell of eucalyptus smoke from the firebox and left his eyes and lungs stinging. When, at the next water stop, Black Ram scrambled up to take Xellos' place as tender, Xellos deposited himself, not in the sleeping car, but in the box car that held Fefinum. Even bespelled, the mule continued to exist in a state of misery, and Xellos craved a counterbalance to the human emotions around him. 

Unfortunately, Swallow was there too; her elation not at all dimmed by whatever worries she carried with regards to her new _giyakwunshe._ At best, their situation complicated her feelings until they tasted of raw onions, not chilies, but that wasn't much help. The door of the box car was unlatched, but still held loosely shut by a length of braided leather rope, allowing a handspan of light and air to enter the car without putting anyone in danger of falling out. Swallow sat back a little from the gap, watching what little she could see of the landscape, and Xellos stoically allowed her to babble to him. He stroked Fefinum's neck and concentrated on the heavy smell of dung, trying to glean useful information out of the litany of place names.

To his surprise, Swallow wound down quite rapidly and looked at him with concern. “Would you mind it, Coyote's Son, if we left the train at the next water stop and went the rest of the way on foot?”

Xellos lifted his head and looked Swallow in the eyes. “Not at all,” he said, with emphasis.

“Oh, good. That will let us go straight to Wakwaha and talk to the people I want to talk to, instead of getting all mired up in Finder's Lodge business in Kastoha, and besides, I really don't know how much more of this Fefinum can take, poor thing.”

Oh. So it was the mule's discomfort she was thinking of, not his. Unless she was being tactful. _My comfort has never been of first concern,_ he reminded himself. That didn't mean he couldn't occasionally feel sorry for himself.

So they ended the journey as they began it, winding on foot through fields and farmlands. Only the bright green of the rainy season made the landscape look any different. The weather was cool and damp that day, clouds occasionally emitting a spatter of rain but mostly just lurking overhead. Swallow, grinning, named trails and streams and stands of oak as they passed, less an orientation than a succession of elated greetings to familiar places as they made their way toward town. Her joy, though intense, was more bearable when not augmented by the other Finders. By concentrating on minutia, he could force the sensation into the background. The fields were smaller than he would have expected for a good-sized town; perhaps Wakwaha purchased most of their food from the other towns? But no, there was the 'hunting side,' which in terms of calories per acre was actually almost as intensely used as the planted land; acorns, chia seeds, deer, mushrooms, cattail shoots... the list went on. Most of the fields possessed, at most, desultory fences; either nobody cared if the deer got into the corn or else their dogs were effective guards. The pastures were completely unfenced, except for one that was delineated by the heaviest stone wall he had seen in weeks.

“Penis meadow,” Swallow explained when he asked. “For the stud bull, and a jackass or so. Wakwaha has four or five of them; there's only one in Tachas Touchas. Look there! You can make out the copper moon on top of the Obsidian heyimas from between those trees there!” 

Xellos followed her finger and caught a flash of light up in the hill that could have been almost anything. He looked around himself with a critical eye. “These trees are badly overgrown,” he said. “I'll bet less than half of them still produce edible fruit, to say nothing of the horse chestnuts invading there. I don't think much of the Valley orcharders if this is an example of their work.” He sounded peevish and petty even to himself. Swallow's cheer was, he reminded himself, no worse than the Princess Amelia's had been, and that he'd been able to endure with politeness, even, if he said so himself, a degree of panache. But then, when in the princess' company, he had always been working in the service of a greater cause, or sometimes several of them. Here, he was adrift and cranky.

Swallow laughed. “You must not have been listening. This is the cemetery for... I think it's Blue Clay, but honestly, it's been long enough since I stayed in Wakwaha I'm not certain. The other four Houses have their own hillsides, too. Apples get planted for remembrance, and it's not taboo to eat them if you happen to be passing through, but we don't gather the fruit. The orchards are on the north slope.” She pointed. The orchards were discernible on the other side of a scatter of tile roofs and open spaces; still not particularly tidy, but more effectively pruned than the cemetery plants. 

“We'll be staying at the Serpentine guest house, over in the Right Arm,” Swallow told him, possibly not for the first time, but he hadn't been attending. “At least for the first few days,” she went on. “ 'Til we get some advice from the scholars. If they think it's important that we stay in Wakwaha for a while, we might stay with some of my friends, but we'll need to go down the Valley to Tachas Touchas sometime before the Sun _wakwa,_ or my mother Agate will come fetch me. It's a tricky time of year to be bringing in puzzles from the Sky houses,” Swallow added, her mind executing another looping turn that put Xellos in mind of her namesake bird. “Anyone who knows anything about that kind of thing is going to be more and more occupied with the Twenty-One Days before the Sun, and you'd think that would be the perfect time to deal with the arms of the world coming together in unexpected ways, but of course there are all these rituals, and the fasting, so everyone's wound tight and out of sorts.”

“I see,” said Xellos. What he saw was that they were destined to come into contact with Swallow's religious authorities soon. This would have to be very carefully played, and he needed to think.

Swallow, still talking, led him and Fefinum through one 'arm' – a loose curve that was not organized enough to count as a street – of the town. “This is Jackrabbit's Grandmother's Hole House, where some of my Red Adobe family live. That's the wash-house for this arm of the town. Here's the Wood Art's workshop. You can just barely see the Hinge from here – the Springs of the River.”

Xellos listened with half an ear and made his own assessments. The closest thing to a capitol city in the Valley was a pretty little place, comprising perhaps three thousand humans, or perhaps three-quarters that number. The five heyimas were visible up the hill above them: great stepped pyramids that were not treated with any notable reverence. Many of the steps had people sitting on them. Xellos spotted a dice game taking place on the corner of the Serpentine edifice.

The houses were made of adobe and cedar, usually two stories high, square or L-shaped, with porches and balconies sprouting here and there. The balconies had steps leading to the ground, suggesting that they doubled as entrances to upper apartments. Often, in fact, the balconies and porches stuck out from opposite sides of the house. When combined with with adjustments for the slope of the ground, this gave them a comically lurching air. A few dozen people bustled here and there; a child driving a small herd of sheep past a garden, an old man muttering to himself as he trudged along. A middle-aged woman rode in a donkey-cart, her legs twisted and trembling with some disease or deformity, and several very small children trotted alongside, begging rides in the cart. An adolescent girl ordered a spotted dog with floppy ears away from a half-dozen brown and green ducks, who were themselves unperturbed; they drifted out of the way muttering, “Murk, murk,” without bothering to take to the air or even call an alarm. 

Taken as a group, the passing 'crowds' as Swallow called them, resembled each other enough to make it possible to describe a typical Kesh phenotype: Someone born to the Valley would be short: the tallest man he saw was half a head shorter than Xellos, who had designed his body to be just a hair above average in the Barrier Lands. The Kesh were round in the face, with wide, dark eyes and fine bones that tended to hide themselves under plump flesh over time. The flesh was never lighter in color than whole-wheat bread, nor darker than a chestnut, averaging out to a color like old oak leaves. Many people, both male and female, had chosen to go shirtless, as Swallow tended to do when it rained. All but a few of the ones who did had visible tan lines at the elbows and neck. Noses and mouths came in five or six different shapes, with certain pairings being more typical. Swallow's downward-pointed nose, when it appeared on on other faces, tended to have beneath it something like her wide mouth with the slightly protruding underlip, where a narrower mouth often attended an upturned nose, and a very flat nose often heralded a small mouth with beestung lips of notable redness. Hair could be any texture so long as it had at least some curl to it, and any color so long as it was black or brown. Xellos brushed his straight, violet bangs out of his purple-gray eyes with a pale, bony hand, and contemplated the possibility of never, ever being anonymous again.


	5. Wakwaha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's got a recap in it, for those who haven't read the rest of my series.

To enter the Serpentine Heyimas of Wakwaha (or any of the other four, for that matter,) one climbed some twenty feet up the stairs that led to the top of the stepped, pyramidal roof, stopping for breath, if one needed to, on one of the ledges or terraces to the side of the stairs, avoiding any freshly repaired section where the mortar or the stucco was still drying, avoiding likewise any spots that were going to be repaired soon but were now treacherous with crumbling brick. Once one reached the top, one turned and faced down the slope of the pyramid, took hold of the ornamental carved handrails, and climbed down the twelve-foot ladder that led to the “first” floor of the Heyimas interior, tucked up under the top of the roof, and then another ladder to the ground level, where the skylight at the top of the building was augmented by electric bulbs at the corners of the roof. Some few people sat on the ground floor, drumming together, and a solemn older man came over to Swallow and Xellos and inquired politely about their business. After that, depending on what you were doing in the Heyimas, you might descend further into a sizable underground complex of storerooms, meeting rooms, and places, like the library, that were both. 

If one were too infirm for all that ladder climbing, Swallow told him when he asked, there were other ways in, though they were intended as ways out, and only in case of fire or flood. (A serious earthquake was probably not survivable in one of these buildings; before the Exchanges of the Terrestrial Cybernet had been destroyed, the one in the Valley had been programmed to warn of impending earthquakes, and those warnings were taken seriously.) Still, one would have to be very infirm indeed to choose these alternate routes. The next person down the ladder after Xellos was the crippled woman they had seen yesterday in her donkey cart, who made her way down the first ladder hand over hand, then at the bottom untied the scooter she had strapped to her back, tucked her useless legs under herself, sat upon it, and rolled over to join the drummers.

In the lower Valley, Swallow told him, where the towns and the heyimas were both smaller, the roofs were only one story tall and the underground chambers would include living quarters for guests and a few scholars. In Wakwaha, where so many people came to stay for only a few days, or half a season, the living quarters were separate, but still placed “on the hunting side” with the five Heyimas, not “on the planting side” with the houses. Xellos took in the information without comment; Swallow was nervous and inclined to babble. “We'll get you a vest some other time,” she told him in an apparent nonsequitor, “It won't matter for today.” 

The vests were another part of heyimas ritual; short, sleeveless waistcoats, finely worked, adorned everyone inside the building except Xellos. Swallow had pulled hers from the very bottom of her saddlebags the previous night, and borrowed an iron from someone else in the guest house to smooth it into presentableness. Xellos gathered the vests were the societal equivalent of a set of 'good' clothes for special occasions. He had heard mention of heyimas vests, dancing vests, and wedding vests, in the talk around the guest house over the previous night.

“Because I am obviously a foreigner and not subject to quite the same behavior rules as the rest of you,” he said aloud. “I quite see. But why are we here?”

Swallow rewarded him with a glare and a fresh squirt of anger. _“I,”_ she said with emphasis, “am here to ask for advice from the scholars of my House. _You_ are here because I did not tell you not to follow me, and it did not occur to you to do something else if I didn't say something.”

“Oh? And why didn't you say something, then?”

Swallow's face flashed from anger to blank surprise and back again, and then she shrugged. “Curiosity.” She did not explain further.

So they made their way down the ladders to a large pentagonal room, also lit by electric bulbs, with murals painted on the upper parts of the walls and shelves lining the lower. The shelves and floor were aged redwood, black and gleaming. A few people occupied the space here and there; an adolescent boy huddled near one of the shelves, weeping, while an older one patted his shoulder comfortingly and murmured, “breathe.” A scamper of young women hurried across the floor, stopped abruptly when they noticed the boy, lowered their voices, and stole over to the shelves, where they gathered several baskets full of … something, and then tiptoed across the room and out another door. 

A slight, middle-aged man walked quietly over to Swallow and Xellos. His vest hung to his knees, not his waist, and he wore, not a knee-length kilt, but a gathered skirt that fell to mid-calf. He had combed his hair back from his balding forehead and wound it in a bun held with silver combs. “So you are here, my niece of the Serpentine,” he said. “My name is Mouse Dance, and this is my household as well as my House, though I am not the Speaker for the House. I am told you wanted to talk with a scholar?”

Swallow returned the greeting with a slight bow, one hand on her collarbone. “So you are here, Aunt of my House. I am Swallow, and my household is Five Toads, in Tachas Touchas. This man with me is Xellos Coyote's Son, of no house, come here to the Valley from a place on the other side of the world, and from the other arm of it.”

Xellos looked at her more sharply. The question of why this man was an 'aunt' could be put aside for later, but Swallow's information was charged. She had used pretty much the same terms every time she introduced him to anyone they'd met on their journey here, but this was the first time she'd made any mention of his supernatural origins. “The other side of the world,” meant exactly what it said – a location in another hemisphere of the earth. The other _arm_ of the world, though, that meant the Astral Plane, what the Kesh called the Four Houses of the Sky. Kesh metaphysics spent a great deal of energy describing the relationships between the earth and the sky, and the “hinges” that held them together and apart. They were depicted graphically as two spirals, curving in opposite directions, meeting at a blank space in the middle. They called this pattern the _heyiya-if,_ and one of them now shone white across Swallow's brown cheek, opening across her forehead and down her neck. Mouse Dance was eying that scar now.

“Is this indeed so?” He – or perhaps it ought to be she – asked, and then without waiting for a response to the question, the scholar went on, “Well, come with me. We'll find somewhere we can talk.”

The two of them followed Mouse Dance into a smaller room off the main one with its floor covered with thick rugs. The walls had no shelves, though one of them was curtained off and one was covered with an abstract-looking mural; whatever it depicted was not obvious in the slightly dim light of the single electric lamp near the ceiling. Dust motes twinkled in the light, and the air smelled a bit stale. Mouse Dance disappeared briefly behind the curtain and emerged carrying a bow and a long-necked, single-stringed instrument that reminded Xellos of a sitar. Swallow chirped a surprised giggle at the sight of it.

“Yes, yes,” said Mouse Dance, patiently. “The yoyide is not the usual instrument for this. All the same, music makes a place for both speaking and silence, and you have a story to tell that frightens you. So, I will play the beginning tone and the continuing tone, and you will tell me the story as if you were talking of a play you had seen. Besides,” the scholar twinkled, “I can't drum worth kale stalks. Never could.”

So they all found places to sit on the rugs. Mouse Dance leaned the neck of the not-a-sitar on one shoulder and began to bow a long, droning note, and Swallow began to speak.

“Well. Most of my work is with the Finders,” she said. There was a slight hint of defensiveness in her tone. “People say it's dangerous work; you can lose your kin-soul and end up not belonging anywhere, they say, and I suppose they're right, but for me- from outside the Valley, I can see it all whole and beautiful. And seeing and knowing how other people live in other places, I can see how our way of living is shaped by our Valley, and how our care and our living here changes the Valley in turn, all of us in iyakwun, even when we don't get along or are unmindful and imperfect...”

Mouse Dance, not looking up from the yoyide, said, “I am not here to judge you, _binyez._ So, you are a Finder, and you like the work.”

Swallow took a deep breath and nodded. “Well. A year or so ago, I journeyed into the Klatsaand country, over there across the Inland Sea in the Range of Light. I brought my mule with me, but none of the other human Finders wanted to go that far, so it was just me and Fefinum. I studied with the Klatsaand doctors from the Sun to the Summer, more or less – they have some treatments they use for muscle spasms, like the ones in _sevai,_ and some other ways of using those same medicines for people with the laugh-and-weeping sickness... it was all very interesting, and I hope to give what I learned to the Doctors here. If they'll still take the gift after... well. That was all fine, all good. And then I began the second half of my journey and started homeward. I came to Anitok, a port town in the Deep Rock country, south of the Easy River, and I was waiting there to see if I could find someone willing to take me up to Sed, or Choum-Rekwit.

“While I was there, I met with a group of four other travelers: two men, two women, all my age or a little younger. They had come to the Deep Rock country from somewhere a very long way away, beyond the Range of Heaven and even beyond the plains on the other side of the Range of Heaven. They had come all that way because of something their visionaries had told them, and they wanted to find the City of Mind. They seemed to think it was a real town you could go to, somewhere. When they talked about what they wanted with the City, it sounded to me like they needed real scholars, not just people who know how to answer messages and read weather charts, so I suggested that they come with me, since both Sed and Choum-Rekwit have good scholars and the Deep Rock people don't. Besides, I was curious.”

Swallow broke off and looked down at the rug, thinking. Mouse Dance shifted his/her hand on the string a little and modulated the note of the drone. “Were you one of these four travelers, Xellos?”

“No,” said Xellos, “I knew them, and I joined the group when we all ran across each other in Tuberhuny, further on in their journey. But I was here in the West for my own purposes, not theirs.”

“What purposes were those?”

“Secret,” Xellos answered complacently. Swallow did nothing so obvious as glare or writhe, but she did not like the reminder not to speak of the Carrion Gyre, and the role it played in the death of the City of Mind. It was in her interest to be silent, though, even in this funny purgative mood that humans got into sometimes.

“They scared me, those four,” Swallow went on quietly, without looking up. “I mean, I liked them just fine, most of the time; they were good traveling companions, interesting and mostly intelligent, fun to spend time with, but they scared me. Their heads were on backward; they lived outside the world. None of them would talk or listen to anyone but human people, not even to Fefinum. And it seemed all their talk turned to fighting, sooner or later, and taking things away and hoarding them. Even the kindest of them talked about making a good place to live by having 'forces' of goodness defeating forces of evil, as if they were armies... I should have gotten away from them much sooner than I did. By the time I realized how sick they were, I was caught in their wheel, and we went on together because we _had_ gone on together.”

Xellos found this particular style of shame rather amusing when the Princess Amelia indulged in it, but such wallowing was unbecoming in a Pact-thrall. Nothing to be done about it right now, though. He let his attention wander to the peculiar mural on the wall of the little room.

“They also had frightening powers,” Swallow said. “The weakest of them could fell a twenty-year-old tree with one blow from his sword- both men carried swords – and the others could call lightning, and wind. They could rise up in the air like quail and hover like hummingbirds. Their leader, a woman called Lina Backward, could call up enough power to boil all the water in a pond in only a minute. And I saw her do it – kill a whole pondful of people with boiling water, just because she wanted a warm bath. She was that careless. And even so, there was a charm about them, so I'd find myself thinking of them like any friendly people I met on the road, maybe even feel sorry for their sorrows or worried about them, and then they'd do something like that again.”

Mouse Dance listened gravely, but without comment, keeping up that long, steady drone on the yoyide.

Swallow took another breath and got a hold of herself a little. “I hadn't quite understood all this at the time we got to Tuberhuny and met Xellos there. But I knew enough to be a little relieved when they told me Xellos was a different kind of person, even though what they told me was very strange.”

Mouse Dance looked up at this. “Yes?”

“They told me,” Swallow explained, “that Xellos was not really human, but a kind of person called a mazoku, who lived in the Houses of the Sky. They said his food was other people's pain and suffering and anger and sorrow. They spoke with dislike, Lina Backwards and the others, but it sounded like one of Coyote's people to me – someone who eats what we cast out – it didn't sound so very bad. He never did tell me what mazokude excrete, though,” she added irrelevantly.

Xellos drew himself up in indignation. “Nor will I,” he declared. _If I do my job properly, he thought, you will discover the answer for yourself one day, Swallow-san._

“Of course the people of the Wind's House can be dangerous,” Swallow went on, arguing mostly with herself, so far as Xellos could see; Mouse Dance merely sawed away. “But I'd pick one of Coyote's children over the Backwards-headed people any day. Well, Lina tried to warn me I was making a mistake, and so did the others. They insisted that mazokude were something different, but if they didn't know Coyote, then who were they to say?”

Xellos fought the urge to squirm. He had, he realized, absolutely no idea what Swallow would say at this point – would she denounce him and beg for help breaking the Pact and casting him off? Praise him for not being as crazy as Lina-San? He was glad, though, that he hadn't allowed her to push him away from this conference; he really didn't want her saying whatever she was going to say behind his back. Any secrets this Pact had, he wanted to be his, not hers.

“I think, though, that he _was_ a kind of sky person,” Swallow said. “He could walk through walls, appear and disappear in the air; he spoke TOK and Kesh and Rekwit and any other language we came across as we traveled. And when I called him one of Coyote's people, he never corrected me. Though I admit,” Swallow looked up for the first time in a while, “He's never confirmed it directly, either.”

“Why not?” Mouse Dance asked Xellos, curiously. 

Xellos considered claiming this, too, was a secret, but then he had a better idea. “Earth words,” he said, “can only ever hold a small piece of the Sky. The Sky woman that Swallow names Coyote may or may not be the person Lina Backwards knows as Lord Beastmaster.” (In Kesh, the name was “Honored Chief of the Four-legged People.”) “To answer yes, or no, to the question might both be wrong. But there are enough similarities to be going on with.”

Mouse Dance nodded comprehension and said, “go on,” to Swallow.

“Well,” she said, “So we all went together to Choum Rekwit, first by boat and then overland. That took half the dry season. And I should have left them there, after the Summer, and let them do their own studying after that, but I didn't. I was afraid if I left before they had what they wanted, they would follow me.”

“With reason,” Xellos put in, and caught another squirt of anger from Swallow. Among the reasons she had for being afraid Lina would follow her was that Xellos had made explicit threats to that effect.

“So I stayed with them, and helped them learn to talk with the Exchanges,” Swallow continued. “That took the other half of the dry season. And in the meantime, something else was happening too.” She shifted in her seat, uncrossing her legs and then recrossing them with the left leg on top instead of the right. “You see, one of the men in our group – Zel, was his name – he had had something happen to him while he was much younger: His foster-father betrayed him somehow, and he was so hurt by this he had begun turning himself to stone – like in the poem about the road that doesn't lead to death. His skin was stone already – really, like sandstone with quartz spars buried in it, only blue-gray instead of yellow-tan. He wanted to start undoing this. He and I talked a lot about Kesh medicine, over time, and about how his people thought about bodies, and so on... I felt sorry for him and I wanted to help.”

Mouse Dance raised one eyebrow. “Was he handsome?”

Swallow laughed. “Oh, no! Even uglier than this one here!” She waved vaguely at Xellos, who made a discontented sound. “Bony as a jackrabbit and a nose so sharp you could cut paper with it. But,” Swallow added, “he did have a nice voice. And they moved well, those men from beyond the mountains. They moved like dancers, like lions. If you told me I was being led by my cunt, I would not say you were wrong. Anyway, I wanted to help Zel, and I got into even more trouble over that.”

She looked at the floor again. “You see,” she said, “when I was fifteen something happened to me: maybe not quite as bad as what had happened to Zel, but bad enough that the Speaker of the Doctor's Lodge in Chulkumas sang at my bringing-in, and she sang the Carrion Gyre. I remembered some of it still; it wasn't mine to give to anyone, but... I tried to share at least some of what I had kept from that bringing-in with Zel. Only then the other two women got involved, too, and before I knew it we were all packing up to go to the volcano country and have a healing _wakwa.”_

Mouse Dance looked up again. “Pass lightly over heavy ground,” he/she recommended. “It would be better not to go back too close to the place that ceremony took you, even in memory, just yet.”

Swallow heard this with both disappointment and relief, Xellos observed. “Well then,” she said, “What I will say now is that a great power came to the time and place where we were singing. When it went away again, all of us were changed. Xellos came into the Five Houses and became entirely a human, or almost entirely. And I...” She rubbed her scar again, one finger stroking the smooth patch of skin that marked the hinge where the two spirals met. “Some of that great power decided to stay with me, and it comes out when I let it, or when I ask it to. Or sometimes when I don't. That scares me more than anything.”

“The scholars will be able to help you with that,” Mouse Dance soothed.

“Xellos came with me to the Valley, afterward,” Swallow went on, “because we found if we try to go too far away from each other, or if we stay apart for too long, we each begin to feel as a drunkard feels when they stop drinking. Headaches, ague, hallucinations, the whole dance. I am not sure I did the right thing bringing something so very strange back to the valley. I don’t know where we should have gone instead. I don't know what to do.”

“I... see.” Mouse Dance modulated the drone another half-step, and then let the sound of it fade. “That is certainly a lot to have happened in half a year.”

“Yes.” Swallow was near tears.

“Did you have any specific questions for me, in this time and place?”

Swallow clenched and unclenched her hands. “I know I need to learn more... I... should I stay in Wakwaha, do you think? Or go home for a little while and come back? Or look for a teacher in the lower valley, or in Chulkumas, where my chosen-sister lives? How much of a danger am I to people here? Do I – we – need to become forest-living people?”

Mouse Dance chuckled gently. “Easy now, _binyez._ Listen, time is different in the Four houses. You do not have to be afraid you will run out of it. Your vision is there; you can go away and come back to it when you are strong enough, and if it takes another hundred lifetimes, the vision will still be there.”

“The vision, yes, but the power? What if I hurt someone?”

“Is it done, the harm that we have to do to one another?” Mouse Dance seemed to be quoting something. “If you want my advice, _binyez,_ I think you should do what you usually do when you return from outside the Valley. Talk with the other Finders and do Finders' _wakwa,_ visit your family, have an argument or two with your mothers, if that's what always happens.” Swallow chuckled in recognition. The scholar went on, switching from the singular to the plural form of 'you.' “If you need help, there is help to be found in every one of the Five houses, in all nine towns. And if you decide to come back to the Springs of the River, we will still be here. The way to come home is to come home, _binyez._ It is not unlike having a new baby come into the household, this kind of thing. For a while, it seems to take over everything, and then the household grows into its new shape, and you find you still do many things you have always done.” After another long pause, Mouse Dance looked at Xellos and said, “Be welcome, Coyote's Son.”

Xellos tore his eyes from the wall painting he had been contemplating with increasing absorption. The spiral motifs were made of little dots, no larger than freckles on a bird's egg, and they seemed to suggest other shapes as well. “What? Oh. Yes. Thank you, Mouse Dance.”

Mouse Dance had listened to Swallow with a gentle and detached patience, but now the scholar came alert. “What do you see on the wall there, Coyote's Son?”

“A map,” Xellos replied. “Rather like the one Swallow-san carries on a pendant around her neck. That is to say, neither that map nor this one would be of much help to someone who had never been to the place it shows. But it is enough of a map to carry the memories for someone who has been there. The one on the wall is a map of the Dolphin's realm.”

“I don't know dolphins,” Mouse Dance said. “I have been told this wall painting was from a vision of the Seventh House – the Fog Puma's country.”

“The Kesh not being seafarers...” Xellos shrugged. “Allowing for translation, that is probably as good a name as any.”

“You are an educated person,” Mouse Dance relaxed a little, having found a way to pretend Xellos was One of Us. “Perhaps you will be able to help Swallow grow accustomed to this way of being as well.”

Xellos grinned. “I would be delighted,” he said, “to teach my _giyakwunshe_ everything I know.”

 

****

They did not go directly back to the guest house after leaving the heyimas. Swallow wanted to take Fefinum for a ride, and to pay a courtesy visit to her cousins in town, and she wanted to be free of Xellos to the extent that she could be, for an hour or two. She suggested that he might find the Madrone Lodge library interesting, and Xellos allowed he thought he would, too. But first, he thought it might be well to clear up a matter of custom, before he put his foot wrong. “You called Mouse Dance, 'aunt,'” he observed.

Swallow shrugged. “It seemed to fit, and she didn't tell me not to. Most woman-living men don't take it as far as skirts and hairpins; we don’t call every gingko by feminine pronouns, but Mouse Dance is putting a lot of effort in.”

“Ah, so an individual courtesy, then, not a general code. I did wonder if perhaps men who worked in the heyimas had to renounce their masculinity.”

Swallow stopped walking and stared at him, incredulous. “What a ridiculous idea! If the sacredness chooses women and men both, why would we accept only one kind of person to do sacred work?”

“You would be surprised how many peoples do just that.”

“Maybe.” Swallow's gaze grew unfocused and inward, and they started walking again. “But maybe we _are_ a little prejudiced here. I think most people would say that men as a group tend to be unsuited for the intellectual life of a scholar; they keep looking for rules that everything follows and getting upset when people don't follow the rules they made. Or they want to take things apart and divide them into little piles, and they think that they have understood something when they do. They want everything written down and fixed on paper. Why are you laughing?”

“You're funny,” he answered, not unkindly. “Swallow, in many, many places, men run things the way women do here, and in those places, the men say that women simply are not suited for the intellectual life, because they are disorderly and emotional, and conflate things that should be sorted into separate piles, and never stick to one principal but shift around depending on the situation.”

“Huh.” Swallow dismissed these misguided populations with a wave. “Well, a part of me is laughing, too, in a bitter kind of way.”

“Oh?”

“That talk with Mouse Dance this morning: even as I was cracking my bones open in there, I could see she was bored and maybe a little scared. I think she thinks I'm crazy. I know she didn't believe more than half of what I told her about Lina's power, or mine. She was doing the same things I do as a Finder, when I have to bargain with some backwards-headed foreigner with notions; it's a set of tools.”

“And so she suggested you learn from another backwards-headed foreigner.”

“Yes, that, but the really funny part is that it worked. Even knowing she didn't care and was mostly spouting platitudes, I heard what I needed to hear. And I do feel a little better.”

“I can see how that kind of experience would lead to very mixed feelings,” Xellos said, summarizing Swallow's emotions and echoing them back to her, to show he had been listening.

She grinned. “And now you're doing it too. Well, but then I think, why not? We don't expect a hammer to stop pounding nails because we know it's a hammer. And a good cook can make good food whether they're sincere or not: maybe they can't make art in a bad mood, but they can do something that people can enjoy and live on. Why should the tools I use be any different? And then I think I'm thinking too much, and I should go gather mushrooms or take Fefinum for a gallop, or something.”

“Then that is what you should do,” Xellos said peaceably. “I will stay at the library, as you suggested.” And, since he couldn't quite resist teasing her, he added, “Do come back before the headaches start, won't you please?” _Until you let yourself be changed, girl, there are only temporary escapes._

Really, though, they were both better for the respite. Xellos quite enjoyed the Madrone Lodge library, and spent the time reading accounts of the period when the Dayao, the Condor People, had made their bid at founding a kingdom on the peninsula. They had made reasonable progress for one generation, before succumbing to various kinds of hubris and squandering their resources. Presumably, the remnants of the Dayao were still around in the volcano country, somewhere, not to mention other peoples who had been, in Kesh parlance, “infected.” There might be something to be done there, eventually. But not for a while yet; the Dayao were misogynists, and Xellos would need, sooner or later, to operate through Swallow. And he was not yet sure of his tool.

***

Swallow, too, was much calmer and seemed more sure of herself when she returned from her ramble. Xellos had kept faint tabs on her by means of the bond, since of course after he'd poked her like that she couldn't stay within the one-mile 'safe' radius for her whole ride. But she hadn't tested either of them too badly, either. When she came to the library door, she had a basket hanging from one arm, full of gleanings from the Hunting Side: sorrel, mushrooms. Perhaps she'd gone as far out as she had partly to avoid arguments with people other than Xellos. There were territories on the Hunting side, too: certain berry patches or oak trees or such belonged to certain families, especially the ones close in to town. “We've got the party at Aunt Lichen's house tonight,” she reminded him.

“Ah, yes.”

Lichen was Swallow's father's sister. Her daughter, Web, was of an age with Swallow, and the two girls had been friends during the brief period of Swallow's adolescence she had spent studying at the Exchange, and then drifted apart again. Web's brother was a shepherd who spent much of his time up in the hills; Xellos wondered if this branch of the family was the source of Swallow's wanderlust.

Ten minutes into the party that evening, he wondered instead just how close Swallow was to these people, because some of the signs were ambiguous. The menu, for instance. Venison was not an everyday food in the Valley, though it was, oddly, more common than mutton. However, none of the dishes laid out under the porch roof of Jackrabbit's Grandmother's Hole House were made with any of the choice cuts of meat- they were all the tough ones that had to be slow-stewed to be edible. Amaranth and long-grained rice were the imported grains in the valley; neither were present. This was a very ordinary party, and it was easy to imagine that, had Swallow not showed up, it would have gone on anyway, as a “Let's use up this venison before it goes bad” party, or a “One last hurrah before we start our ritual fasts and abstinences before the Solstice” party, or, possibly, a “Let's show our neighbors what a terrific party we can throw” party. Kesh society was fairly egalitarian, which meant, of course, that jockeying and negotiations for standing were constant and varied, and a gift-based economy meant that questions of debt and favor became as charged and labyrinthine as in the wealthiest of courts. Xellos began to think he might quite enjoy his time here after all.

Swallow's gifts to the family were likewise calibrated, being small both in compass and in price. Web's daughter Becoming, a girl of three or so, was delighted to receive a thumb-sized toy animal of felted wool, devoid of ears, legs, or tail. “A himpi!” she cried, “I'm going to to call it Rosie. When I get a real himpi I'm going to call it Rosie, too.” Web and Lichen each received linen kerchiefs dyed and woven in the ikat style, which apparently was not a common technique in the Valley, because Swallow described it. Xellos had the idea that Swallow had intended the new technique, or the seed of it, to be part of the gift as well; both women were in the Cloth Art. However, if that was the intention, their hosts were not cooperative. Both accepted the scarves with polite appreciation, but when told how they were made, Lichen sniffed and said, “The cats elsewhere may be green, but the cats here don't care,” and Web made no attempt to counter her rudeness by so much as an embarrassed look or a covert hand flutter. Web's husband Sage liked his carved soapstone ball from the Deep Rock country, though, and Lichen's husband, blind with a disease called vedet, held his fragrant eucalyptus-wood box under his nose with shaking hands and sniffed happily.

In return, Web presented Swallow and Xellos each with a new shirt – or maybe not entirely new. From the feel of the fabric and the slight grayness of the colors, the shirts had been made over and redyed, at some point. Swallow's was onion-skin orange. The one given to Xellos was fancier – a buttery yellow color with strips of blue around the yoke, cuffs, and hems. Trying it on, Xellos concluded that the blue strips were recent additions to the garment, intended to expand it to fit him. Well, that was hospitable; it would have been easy enough to leave the shirt unaltered and leave him looking silly. He made his thanks a sort of test: “A woman as unconventional as Swallow is indeed lucky to have such generous relatives,” he said, attending closely to the answering emotional responses. To someone resentful, the words would sound like a veiled accusation. If they were protective of Swallow and suspicious of him, they would suspect him (more-or-less correctly) of parasitical tendencies. If the leading emotion was pride or smugness, then they might be inclined to lord it over their impecunious relatives but could probably be used.

Web frowned slightly, smelling a bit worried. “Generosity is true wealth, so they say. Come have some more wine.” She led him away from the little group that had formed around Swallow, asking for more stories of abroad. “You speak Kesh very well, for a no-house person,” Web began. “I've never met someone who didn't grow up here that didn't mix up _uv_ and _we_ from time to time, at least.”

Xellos bowed slightly without saying anything, waiting for Web to get to the point. 

“I can tell it was Swallow who taught you, though; even after spending half her life in Chulkumas she still has that lower-valley drawl.”

This made Xellos smile a little. “I'd not noticed that much difference, but then, she's been talking faster since we came to Wakwaha. I thought it was nerves; is she just trying to keep up with everyone else?”

“A little of both, maybe. She does tend to... adapt.” Web looked down at her wine cup and then up again, speaking quite rapidly herself. “Forgive me if I'm too nosy,” Web said, twisting her fingers together, “but if Swallow means to head downriver soon we probably don't have time for politeness. I've heard whispers here and there – did you really give up everything you had to come with her?”

Xellos wondered how many ears the tale had passed through to get twisted into that shape. “Uh, well...”

“Because,” Web hurried on, “While Swallow is a rich-marrowed woman in her way, she isn't... that is, sometimes... Well, her love affairs usually don't last long. And she can be... What I am trying to say, Xellos of no house, is, nobody should have to depend on just one person. If Swallow sends you away from her household, or you come to a time and place where you want to leave and need somewhere to go, the doors will be open here. We know what she's like; we won't hold it against you.”

Xellos shut his mouth, slowly. He felt his eyes were crossing. “You're worried... about _me,_ ” he said, slowly. “On my behalf, I mean. My... my.” He was too boggled even to laugh. “Well. Well, that is very... very generous of you, Web. I will remember your offer with gratitude, whatever happens between your cousin and me.”

“You're not offended, are you? I mean, I'm sure you don't see her that way...:

Now Xellos did laugh. “I am not offended,” he said. “and matters are not quite as you suppose them. It is not that I decided to fly west with the Swallow, and so gave up everything from my old life. It is that I gave up everything, and then Swallow was still there. So I followed her.”

“I suppose that's a little better,” Web allowed. “Only, you call her _giyakwunshe_...” 

“Not because I'm besotted, I promise. It is a four-house matter, and I believe Swallow prefers that we not talk about it too much, but I am well aware that she and I don’t know each other well yet. It would not surprise me to learn she has some hidden depths.”

“More like hidden shallows,” Web said with some bitterness. “She turns with the wind, Swallow does. If you are talking of serious things, she will look serious and earnest and say 'yes, yes,' and then the wind shifts and she goes on her way, and you realize she didn't really care at all...”

“That sounds like you're remembering something specific.”

“Oh, it's all water under the bridge, now.” Web took a sip of wine and sighed. “I see Swallow maybe once or twice a year, for a few days, when she comes back from some trip or other. And I do enjoy those visits, and her, for a few days a year. I've just learned I can't rely on her when I'm in trouble.” 

“Well,” Xellos said calmly, “In that case, I am doubly grateful for your offer.” They both headed back into the party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Per canon, Kesh has different words for the literal and metaphorical hearts. Having the metaphorical heart be "marrow" is all me and I am stupidly proud of it. Let's hope I can remember to keep it up in subsequent chapters.
> 
> _Uv_ and _we_ are both descriptive modifiers; mixing them up would be like mixing up _-ful_ and _ish_.


	6. Chulkumas

From Wakwaha, the northernmost of the nine towns, to Tachas Touchas, the southernmost, was a journey of some twenty-five or thirty miles: a few hours for a horse or even a sufficiently motivated human runner. Xellos, Swallow, and Fefinum took three days. Or, to be more exact, they arrived in Chulkumas after a brisk half-morning's walk, then stayed there the rest of the day and night before going on again. Chulkumas had featured much more largely in Swallow's tales of home than Tachas Touchas had, and Xellos looked around himself with interest. Except for being on the flats instead of the hills, Chulkumas looked much like Wakwaha: The same tiny gardens and untidy orchards, the same lurching, lopsided-looking houses, possibly a few more pastures, with more horses in them and fewer goats. Indeed, it seemed Fefinum had friends among the local equine population, because she perked up and brayed greetings once or twice on their way into town. Since they were on the main road, their arrival was heralded by a volley of noise from the motley inhabitants of a collection of waist-high sheds scattered along it. The Dogtown, as Swallow called it, was very nearly its own suburb, though the dogs, like the gardens, were fewer than Xellos would have expected from a town this size. None of them seemed to be very aggressive; most of the barking ones stayed near the open doors of their kennels. One or two of them seemed to be personal acquaintances of Swallow's; here and there they were approached by a wagging tail and she would scratch someone behind the ears. But Fefinum didn't much like Dogtown, and they made their way beyond it quickly. Once the hubbub died down a little, Swallow inflated her lungs and shouted. “So you are here, people of Chulkumas!”

A few people looked up from here and there from among the workshops. When Swallow did not begin a chant vaunting her goods for sale, nor her skills as an entertainer, most looked away again. She addressed the ones who were left. “I'm looking for-” but a woman came pelting from around the corner of one of the houses, shouting and waving. 

“So you are here, you wayward himpi-eater!” And Swallow flew to meet her. 

_This must be Hazelnut,_ Xellos concluded, following more slowly and leading Fefinum. If so, her name had come from something other than her appearance; she was neither shorter nor rounder than most Kesh women, and her expressive face bore none of a hazelnut's smoothness; boils dotted it here and there on the temple and chin, and her nose was lumpy. She hugged Swallow tightly, her grin moving up and down as much as sideways and revealing a gold eyetooth.

Swallow returned her “chosen-sister's” embrace. “So you are here, you shampoo-eating clown. Oh, this is a good day you have made!” Xellos turned his head away in self defense. Some of his empathic powers were coming back, he thought; their joy and affection made the top of his mouth burn. But the burn blurred and transformed if he looked away, becoming something more like a smell again. Perhaps, then, it was not a matter of his senses sharpening, but of his ill-programmed human brain creating an illusion from its memories of past input. He'd seen that happen, from time to time – people who could hear you perfectly well so long as they could also lip-read, for instance. _It's been barely a month, and already the body is lying to me._

Swallow and Hazelnut worked through the inevitable beginnings: the how-was-your-journey-where-did-you-get-that-scar-boy-that's-some-news-about-the-exchanges-isn't-it, before Hazelnut addressed Xellos directly.

“Be welcome, my sister's lover! Swallow wrote me a few messages on the exchange that mentioned the people she was traveling with, but nothing that led me to think I'd meet any of you! Which one are you, then? Not the stone boy, surely?”

“Well...” Xellos wished he'd been paying closer attention to Swallow's briefing. Should he mention his inhuman past, or not?

“Xellos is the one who used to live in the Wind's house,” Swallow supplied.

“Indeed?” Hazelnut's gaze turned shrewd. “Peregrine told me She Tries told him you told her something about taking hands in the Hawk's house, and not letting go. And now you tell me you went to the houses of the Sky and came back with a heyiya-if on your face, and that your man used to be some other kind of person. I guess you're turning into some kind of visionary, Swallow?” Then Hazelnut dropped her gravity in favor of a clownishly innocent expression and a needling tone. “Or else you just went crazy.”

That both was and wasn't a joke, Xellos gauged. Hazelnut was worried but not admitting it to herself, which meant he had a decision to make: did he want Hazelnut to think Swallow was crazy? It would certainly help disengage her from her homeland, if her family didn't believe her. But on the other hand... when in doubt, Xellos always favored ambiguity. “I have found,” he said, “that the line between sanity and madness gets drawn in different places, for different peoples. I expect you both will have to decide that question for yourselves.”

Swallow looked at him quizzically, but sensibly did not rush to defend herself or prove her new powers. “This last journey has been a mess,” she said. “It's going to take me forever to get it untangled in my head. I'm going to want to do Finder's Return wakwa, and have a bringing-in, _and_ start learning with the scholars, and maybe somewhere in there I'll be able find ways to talk about some of it without getting it wrong. I'm going to try to dance more of the Sun this year.”

“Hmm?” Hazelnut clasped Swallow's shoulder briefly with one hand, then wiped her brow dramatically. “I'm so glad you're not crazy. Waterstrider's really enough for one arm of one town, don't you think? Did you hear she and Careful are dancing the Wedding Night this year? She says so, anyway.”

“Oh, really? Careful usually lives up to his name better than that. Are they living together?”

“He moved in less than twenty days after she kicked Hempseed out.”

Swallow made a farting noise with her tongue. “I'm sure they'll keep each other entertained.”

“Well, _I'm_ sure having fun with it!” Hazelnut took Swallow's elbow and started to lead them further into the town. Xellos listened to their gossip, cross-referencing names with previous data that Swallow had let loose at one time or another. Careful, he remembered, had been one of Swallow's more serious boyfriends, Hempseed one of the lesser ones. Waterstrider was on the periphery of Swallow's acquaintance, being of the same age but a different House, and not a close friend. Hazelnut had been a friend before Swallow came to Chulkumas and now was a very good friend - “chosen sister” was a title that carried actual, legal responsibilities, or would have done so, if the Kesh had anything like a formal system of law. He resolved to get her alone later and pump her for more information.

He got his chance that afternoon; not to talk to Hazelnut, but to her mother Keepword. While the younger generation trooped off to see Fefinum settled and then do laundry, Xellos asked Keepword if he could make himself useful and was soon kneeling at a low table in a large room, peeling soaproot.

“My husband's a Chumo man,” Keepword explained as if it meant something. “It's just not a party if he doesn't have his baked soaproot, and Hazelnut has a taste for it too.” _Shampoo-eater,_ Xellos thought. _And I would guess that himpi will not appear on the menu tonight, but it might, in Tachas Touchas._

The room had, it seemed, a multiplicity of uses, because in addition to a woodstove and a sink (hand pump, removable basin) and a set of shelves with small lidded jars and baskets, copper pots, and clay dishes, there was, in another corner, a small shelf of books, and a sewing basket. Three or four drop spindles sat on a wooden bench-chest; Keepword whisked them under its lid as they walked in. A few minutes later, Keepword's husband Buckbrush came in, looked around, and opened the same chest.

“Take that outside!” Keepword admonished, “I don't want any loose fibers floating into the food.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. Want any help?”

“You could run down to the heyimas and get some four-days' leached acorn flour – enough to fill the red jar - and a couple of onions.”

“Will do.”

Xellos, peeling roots, gathered impressions and drew conclusions. If, in a house this size, the greatroom had more than two purposes, that meant the building was, in fact, a multi-family dwelling. The small size of the pantry shelf and Buckbrush running to the heyimas, not to mention the separate wash-house the girls were at, indicated that much of the life of the town took place outside the family unit, in the workshops and the fields and so on. Staple foods were kept at and distributed from the heyimas, it seemed. Keepword, when he asked, nodded. “Having hoards, giving flows,” she said. “So we give to our Houses and they give back. It's practical, too. The more things you keep in your household, the more trouble you'll have with mice and carpet beetles and so on.”

Xellos smiled. “There's always so much to learn when one comes to a new place. Swallow's been telling me about the valley for months but there's still a lot she left out, or didn't think to mention. For instance, Swallow has told me very little about her mother, except, indirectly, that they don't get along.”

“Ahhh.” Keepword whisked the bowl of peeled and cut-up soaproot away to rinse under the pump. She started arranging the rinsed slices in a clay baking dish, along with pinches of this and that from the pantry shelf. “Agate,” she said after a moment or two, “was Speaker for the Doctors' Lodge in Tachas Touchas for nine years, and is still probably the best practitioner in the town. She studied here and in Wakwaha, when she was young; had she stayed in either place, she might have had an even larger practice. But she would not have been the best in town, and she would not have been Speaker.” She decorated the root slices with one last drizzle of olive oil, set a lid on the dish, and slid it into the oven. “I'll be back,” she said. “Just taking the rinse-water and the peelings back to the adobe people.”

Xellos puzzled over the statement for a few moments; Red and Yellow Adobe were the names of two of the clans the Kesh called “Houses,” but surely they had their own peelings and dishwater? Keepword dumped the bowl of peelings into the basin of the sink, then lifted the basin and carried it out the door. Xellos watched her through the window and saw her heading for a garden plot. _Oh. THOSE adobe people._ None of Lina's group had ever gotten used to the variety of beings that the Kesh categorized as “people,” and even Xellos slipped up occasionally. In fact, perhaps it would be better to say there was no word for “person” as there was no word for love. There were corpses (including lumber and leather,) tools, (articles of clothing were tools for keeping warm and creating impressions), and everything else was _sheh,_ being, and was seen as belonging to one of the Five Houses of the Earth or the Four Houses of the Sky. The divide between the two was, roughly, whether humans made use of the things in question. Wild gathered plants and wild hunted animals lived in or "came into" the Serpentine and the Blue Clay. Weeds, ghosts, and household pests, though intimately acquainted with humanity, were Four-House People. So were fictional characters and anyone discussed in the past or future tenses. Keepword came back and replaced the basin.

“Agate's not a bad woman, really, down in her marrow,” she said, resuming their conversation. “Just willful. And proud, of course. As long as you don't try to challenge her authority in her own house, she'll probably treat you fine.”

“Does Swallow defy her, then?”

“Swallow left the Doctors' lodge for the Finders. Agate won't forgive that until the Blue Clay sings the Moon, even if she gives it up and obeys from now on.” Which Swallow would not do, Xellos was certain. Or, not for long.

“Was that her first rebellion?”

“Agate would say coming here after the trouble with the Pig Man was her first rebellion, but Adsevin will tell you different.”

“And now she's bringing a foreigner home to her mother's household. This will be interesting.”

Keepword laughed. “Just keep looking at it like that, then, and don't let it bother you too much. Not everyone listens to Agate, not even in Tachas Touchas.”

Swallow and Hazelnut arrived not long after, trailing with them several other people Swallow's age. Hempseed proved to be a pudgy, sleepy-eyed man with a gentle, drawling voice; clear enough where the name had come from. A woman named Shining, with a baby on one hip, stopped by long enough to say hello and welcome, promised to come back “as soon as Pumpkin falls asleep,” and never did. A woman named Gall said almost nothing and eventually faded away into the corner of the room with the books. Hazelnut brought her lover with her: a tallish man (not quite as tall as Xellos) who endured Hazelnut's jokes and teasing with boundless (and possibly groundless) self-assurance. This man was called Kemel, after the Red Star, and he worked as a Miller – a job considered to be as disreputable and “dangerous” as the Finder's lodge. The millers ran mills: for flour, but also lumber and electricity, and they oversaw the making and repair of other mechanical devices as well. If Kemel was any example, they shared the slightly distant outlook and poor social skills of engineers everywhere. Unlike Hempseed, Kemel and Swallow shared no intimate history so far as Xellos knew, but the assessing look he got from the miller did make him wonder.

“There!” Hazelnut said after the introductions, as they all distributed themselves around the porch and the kitchen doorway. “Now you've met every feckless, wet-naveled, no-account young person in Chulkumas, except for Blue Horse, who's on a hunting trip, and Betebbes, who has a hangover.”

“And Waterstrider,” said Gall, briefly.

“Waterstrider is a very important person,” Hempseed declaimed. “She absolutely must do everything in her household, because nobody else does it right, and they all take advantage of her, and nobody understands how she suffers. Her suffering is more important than any other suffering in Chulkumas.”

“Oh, but Careful loves her now, and once he loves her enough everything will be all better.”

“See, this is how we welcome our guests,” Hempseed said to Xellos. “We gossip about people you've never heard of, behind their backs.”

Xellos smiled. “And you will gossip about Swallow and me as soon as we leave, of course.”

“Yup. Better tell us something good.”

“Well...” Xellos considered. He would very much preferred to have remained mysterious, but Swallow was, it seemed, telling all sorts of things to all sorts of people, and besides, if you told people things they already knew, they wouldn't accidentally find out things they didn't know. “My mother's household is a place called Wolfpack Island,” he told the group, in a careless voice that suggested he might be making up the story as he went along, “and she is a powerful person, called Honored Chief of the Four-Legged People. I have served her for a very long time, and in her service I came West. It was...” he dropped his voice dramatically, “...a suicide mission.” His audience gasped, pop-eyed. “Only, as it turns out, I didn't die.”

“So I see...” Kemel muttered.

“But, no provision having been made for my return, this unexpected course of events left me at something of a loss, until Swallow decided to take me home with her. How was that?” He asked Hempseed.

“Oh, you're good! People will be talking about that one 'til the Moon wakwa.”

“The Moon wakwa five years from now,” Hazelnut amended. “Of course, if you were following any kind of chief so mindlessly you were ready to die for it, it means your head's probably on backward, but even so, good story.”

“Unless he decided a suicide mission was a good time to take his freedom and run,” Kemel put in.

“I can see how that version might be more appealing,” Xellos said.

“Is that what happened?”

“Oh, I expect you'll all keep arguing it both ways all the rest of the winter and maybe into the spring, unless Waterstrider does something particularly egregious, no matter what I say, or don't.” Xellos spread his hands. “So I won't. Why spoil your fun?”

“And now you see why I have to stop swearing so much,” Swallow added lightly. “If I use up all the really good words just because Fefinum isn't a morning person, what does that leave for dealing with this twisted-neck, city-born, fourth son of an eel?”

“Aho, Swallow,” said Gall from the corner, “Looks like you're really in love, this time.”

“Oh, hush.”

The conversation broke up then, as Keepword sent various persons to gather additional baked chickens from the nearby families whose ovens she had been borrowing, and to set the table, and to slice up the zucchini and the aubergines, and to roll the dough she had made of the acorn meal and minced onion into fritters, and fry them and the vegetables. Swallow stepped into the family's inner room to bring out her selection of gifts from abroad again, and this lot looked to be more expensive: pairs of silver combs from the Deep Rock people for Keepword and Hazelnut, set with pieces of turquoise and glittering jasper. A little enameled horse sculpture for Buckbrush: “The people of Ansul say the waves of the ocean are horses, called the Seunes.” A pair of bent-nosed tweezers, mounted under their own magnifying lens, for Kemel (“I bet I could make something like this,” he said) and a little chapbook of Klatsaand poems translated into Tok for Gall. Hempseed got another ikat scarf, but unlike Web or Lichen, he seemed to be interested in the new technique, as well as the fabric. “If I can make it work, Swallow, I'll do a heyimas vest for you. Oh, that reminds me. Xellos, that cloak of yours...”

Xellos looked up from the stove, where he was still rolling acorn fritters. “What about it?”

“Swallow had me look it over and see if I could mend it, but I don't think I can.”

“Oh, that's quite all right.”

“It's really a shame,” Hempseed sighed. “That would be such a heya dancing cloak if you hadn't got it all snagged on thorn bushes and things and used it as a blanket all this time. But I think,” he brightened, “I think I could salvage enough of it to make, say, a jacket, with sleeves and maybe even a hood, and most of the trim is in pretty good shape – I could put that around the hems and cuffs.”

“Er...” How did these people keep blindsiding him? They weren't, Xellos told himself sternly, really doing anything humans hadn't done before, even in the barrier lands. There was just more of it out here. That had been true even in the days when the cities of Sann and of Loss covered the hills, and the Inland Sea and the Omorn Sea were both valleys. Xellos was, perhaps, just a bit rusty after spending so much time with The Inverse. It was not that he was losing intelligence with only a meat-jelly brain to think with. It wasn't.

“Actually,” Swallow said, “I was thinking of a kind of sewing the Folded Hills people do: they call it cloth-tile work, and that's what it looks like; they cut out cloth shapes and make patterns out of them, like mosaics. I think Peregrine has a piece or two he could show you. If you did something like that over the worst snags...”

“That might work.”

Xellos dropped his spoon back into the bowl of acorn mush with a clatter. “I'm sure you both mean well,” he said tightly, “but that cloak is the only thing I have left from Wolfpack Island, and I think I prefer to leave it as it is, snags and all.” 

“Oh,” Hempseed looked down. “Sorry. I didn't realize. Never mind, then.” Swallow said nothing.

 

****

By the time everyone had washed their hands (Valley standards for the process were more exacting than the Seyruuni ones) and sat down for supper, the tension had eased – or, in Swallow's case, been put aside for later. Swallow's stories about the Klatsaand people's style of baking, and the encounter with the Ailkrye boys, and other innocuous episodes, came out again. Xellos ate one acorn fritter for each of the several different kinds of sauce on the table, and discovered that the chunky red one was sweet, with a touch of mint, and the smooth green one was salty with a touch of lemon, the white one with the cucumbers was quite tart, and the smooth dark red one was sadistic, and even worse when you tried it at a table full of people who found the results amusing. Wine quenched the fire better than water did, but after that Xellos left the dark red one strictly alone.

As people started their second glasses of wine, the talk became more meandering and philosophical. Listening, Xellos decided that Hazelnut's earlier characterization of the group as “feckless, wet-naveled, no-account people” had been an exaggeration, though it might reflect the accumulated scoldings of their respective grandmothers. Swallow's friends in Chulkumas were the ones of their generation who had not yet married, except for Shining and, perhaps in the next year, Hazelnut and Kemel. They were the ones who continued to do odd jobs of farming or housework but had no particular expertise, except for Kemel, maybe Hempseed, and Swallow, who had little room to practice her chosen art on her home ground. They were the ones who did not involve themselves much in the heyimas or sacred work, except for Hazelnut, who studied with something called "the Blood Clowns," and maybe Gall, though she didn't say much about it. All in all, they seemed like the sorts of people Xellos usually worked with: drifters, dreamers, misfits... no wonder Swallow had found it so easy to travel with The Inverse.

After supper, the entertainment shifted from gossip to making art; not a practice Xellos cared for much. He could _diagnose_ beauty, in human faces and in human art; he could detect its presence and use it to predict behavior, but it didn't mean much to him personally. Once the dishes were put away, Buckbrush finally retrieved his spindles and a bag of linen fiber from the bench-chest, and Keepword and Hazelnut pulled out a flute and a “tongue drum” from one of the baskets near the bookshelf. The latter was a wooden box with slots in the lid dividing it into different-sized rectangles – it was played like a marimba. Gall, after a while, opened her little book of poetry and tried to read some of the Klatsaand poems aloud, in their Tok translations. Tok not being a very euphonious language, Gall then tried translating them a second time, into Kesh, and she and Hempseed were soon trading improvised, “dragonfly” poems, based loosely on Klatsaand themes, to the accompaniment of flute, tongue-drum, and drop spindle. Swallow slipped away to “talk to Fefinum,” and came back an hour or so later carrying a handful of rolled-up pieces of eucalyptus bark, which she then turned into another instrument, clacking them against her hand in a rhythmic counterpoint to the tongue-drum. Kemel took his leave. Xellos took Gall's place by the bookshelf and tuned the rest of them out.

****

The chimes hanging from the porch rang in a gust of wind, and Gall and Hempseed said their goodbyes, hurrying home before the wind brought more rain. Swallow and her chosen-family hauled bedding out from the chests in the inner room; she declined an offer for herself and Xellos to take the small room for privacy; the main room would be fine. Buckbrush stumped off to the washroom to clean his teeth. Swallow opened the firebox door of the stove and shoved her eucalyptus hand-hitter in to burn. Hazelnut glanced at the corner where Xellos had been reading and clapped both her hands over her mouth, stifling her giggles. “He's asleep!” she whispered. “How much wine did he have, anyway?"

Swallow looked down at him. Xellos usually slept on his side, curled up, but this time he was flat on his back, head tilted backward, mouth open. The book he had been reading flopped spine upward on his chest. Swallow plucked it gently off him, and he didn't stir. “No more than the rest of us, I don't think,” she whispered back, “But he usually drinks tea, given the choice. Maybe now we know why.”

“Aren't they cute when they're asleep,” Hazelnut sighed, and then looked at Swallow with sparkling eyes. “I just have to.”

Swallow looked down again, at the lamplight glowing on the white face. “Yeah,” she said, “you do.”

Hazelnut was already tiptoeing to one of the storage baskets, rummaging as quietly as she dared, and came back with an ink pot and a fine-tipped brush. Swallow bit her tongue against her own giggles. It was a petty, silly joke, she knew. The joke of a feckless, wet-naveled, no-account person. But also funny. And nothing that Xellos couldn't take.

Behind them, Keepword sighed. “I actually had something I wanted to talk over with you girls,” she said, “but it doesn't look like you're in the mood right now.”

“We could walk over to the heyimas,” Swallow suggested, “so we won't disturb either of the men if the talking goes on for a while.”

“I'd be up for that,” Hazelnut agreed, frowning in concentration. “Just... a minute...” She finished one last brushstroke and backed carefully away to the sink. She corked the ink pot, rinsed the brush in the water cup Kemel had left behind, and set both brush and pot on the pantry shelf. “OK, let's go.”

They ended up, not at the heyimas, but at the wash-house, quiet and abandoned in the dark of the late evening. They sat on lidded laundry hampers, looking out the door at the rain in silence, each thinking her own thoughts. Swallow drew her map amulet off over her head and looked at it; first the Valley side, then the side with the whole Inland sea, then ran the cord through her fingers and wound it around her hand, then turned the amulet over again. After a while, Keepword asked, “Swallow, do you really mean to leave the Finders?”

Swallow breathed in and out. She couldn't travel for more than a day from Coyote's Son, and getting him into the Finders so he could travel with her would be very, very difficult; too many different kinds of danger piled on top of each other. “I don't know yet,” she said. “I don't really want to, but I can see that the next year or two are going to be full of other things. And it looks as though I'm going to have other sources for strangeness for a while.”

“Are you going to stay with Agate, then?”

“At least until the Sun. After that... well, there's this visionary business; it feels – at least, right now it feels – like something I stumbled into and will walk away from, but maybe not. I may be looking for a teacher. I'm not sure who I'd learn with, in Tachas Touchas; Looks High, maybe? I wasn't paying attention to all that; I don't know any of the scholars there well.”

“If you decide to come back to Chulkumas, _binyez,_ you know you will always be welcome at Was a Mill House... and if you and Kemel want to make one bed here, Hazelnut, you know you can do that too.” Keepword's voice was a little hesitant. 

“But?” Swallow asked.

“Another choice stands open – for both of you. All four of you. My mother's brother Garlic, you know, he's been living by himself in his workshop in Red Beams House, but he's over seventy now; he could use some younger human people in his household, or living nearby, to make sure he remembers to eat and give him a hand with the heavy work. He has a hard time taking that gift from me, but if he thought he was doing a favor for a couple just starting out...”

“That would be perfect for you, Swallow!” Hazelnut exclaimed immediately. “Garlic and I get on each other's nerves, you know – but you're more patient with strong-minded people than I am. Well, except for your mother, maybe. And if I move out of Was a Mill, everyone will blame it on Kemel, which isn't fair, but if you came there whe- um, I mean, if Agate doesn't want a no-house man in her household...”

“When. That's a when, not an if. _When_ Agate kicks us out, then Garlic could be the generous one by letting us stay at Red Beams.” Swallow tried to think. “Who is in that household, besides Garlic?”

“A few chickens and a milch goat,” Keepword said, “And he shares our acorn grounds and the pinyon that grows over by the Lakwanwe rocks, and there's a patch of ground where he grows medicinal plants near the Wood Art workshop – it's the one with the lemon tree in the middle – and I think he maybe has some other gathering grounds as well that he hasn't shared with anyone. If you wanted to learn the herbary work with him, he might show them to you.”

And if Swallow came to that household and stayed for a year, or five years, or nine, until Garlic died, somewhere along the line it would be Garlic staying in her household, more than she in his, and she would have a respectable place in Chulkumas to step into. Or, in a year, or five, or nine, if this matter with Coyote's Son played itself out and she was free to go back to migrating with the Finders, someone else would take over minding Garlic, and would inherit the household, and Swallow would still be poor and disreputable, but traveling again, doing the work she loved best. The choice was a choice for later, not for now.

“Do you think he'd be all right if things stayed as they are until the World?”

Keepword reached over and squeezed Swallow's shoulders in a hug. “If he isn't, I can always send for you.”

Swallow hugged her chosen-mother back and wiped away a stray tear – the wine was making her a little maudlin, or maybe it was just finding part of her home still there waiting for her, when so much else had changed. The three of them made their way back to Was a Mill House to get ready for bed. Swallow laid out a rush mat next to Coyote's Son, in case he woke in the night and wanted something more comfortable to lie on, and draped a couple of blankets over the top of him. Hazelnut had actually been quite restrained; she'd only painted one word on his face. _“Lightweight.” If only it were true._


	7. Coming to Agate's Household

Tachas Touchas had a reputation within the Valley. Swallow had mentioned it more than once, as had several other people at the Serpentine guest house in Wakwaha. The town of Tachas Touchas had been settled by people “outside,” ages ago; the Kesh had at some point flowed down from Wakwaha to meet it. The populations had long since mingled, but the stubborn question remained: you're from Tachas Touchas? Are you really One of Us? To which, as people will, the population of Tachas Touchas made the answer, “We are one of _Us,_ which is better.” Or one could decide that being One of Us was overrated, which explained Swallow, were an explanation necessary. Exactly how a gregarious creature like Swallow had come from this unpromising setting might be unclear, but having done so, her subsequent decision to pursue as much of her life outside it as possible did not seem greatly mysterious. As she and Xellos chatted their way southward from Chulkumas, the warning repeated itself, not so much in words as in hesitations and sudden, fennel-scented whiffs of caution or doubt from the people they talked to, as soon as they mentioned where they were headed. A Finder and a No-House man planning to stay in Tachas Touchas? Really? It was a poor town, people said, meaning tightfisted. They were inward-turned. Well, if you had family there, you might be all right. Go easily, travelers!

No one outside the Valley appeared to have even heard of it, Xellos remembered. Most of the nine towns had some sort of export. Wakwaha had – or used to have – the Exchange and so was the seat of much diplomacy and correspondence. Kastoha had the Line, and the more material conduit to other places. Telina made steel, and Chulkumas was the place to go for horses, though the horses, like the rest of the Kesh, were easy-natured, short, fine-boned, and inclined to fat; not to everyone's taste. Chumo had the largest sheep and goat flocks, though the wool was, for the most part, consumed within the nine towns. The Lower Valley towns all grew grapes and made wine, but the cash crops there were from Madidinou and Sinshan, for the most part, while Ounmalin and Tachas Touchas simply made enough to get along from year to year. In point of fact, both of them had more active branches of the Glass Art than usual, since both had access to beaches and other patches of nearly pure silicone sand, uncontaminated by fumo particles (fumo seemed to be a kind of polymer – the granular remains of the age of Plastic), down at the Mouths of the Na. But this industry was not accompanied by fame. The two southernmost Valley towns made bottles for the wine other people grew and went unremarked. 

So Xellos anticipated a certain amount of suspicion and hostility to be his lot for the next little while; perhaps in Tachas Touchas he might even find a secret or two to pass the time with. The town, when they finally rounded Bone Mountain and it came into view, certainly looked the part. From whatever confluence of microclimates, the forest here held more evergreens than oak, and the firs and cedars loomed ponderous and black over the houses, which glowed the red and silver of new and aged cedar in the last of the watery afternoon sunlight. They were not Valley houses. There were no porches, no balconies, no higgledy-piggledy external staircases, no red tile roofs. No adobe used at all, in fact, only cedar and redwood. All twelve or fifteen tall, narrow, flat-fronted houses stood shoulder to shoulder in a tight curve, tied together by a single line of rain gutter. Swallow, beside him, took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders, ran her hands over her face, tried fruitlessly to smooth her hair, and led Fefinum toward one of the barns without comment. Xellos followed her in and then out again, carrying Fefinum's saddlebags and looking around. He was fairly certain there were eyes at some of the windows, watching them. Sheep bleated somewhere; their bells clanking, and a dog barked. Someone was leading them to one of the other barns, perhaps. An invisible cow lowed. A sound of drums came faintly from the heyimas, nearly drowned out by the falling rain and the babble of the little creek at the hinge of the town. Shasash, the creek was called, and there was a cairn of stones beside it. Swallow took a brief sidestep to add a flat pebble to the pile, whispering a word as she did so. Afterward, she straightened, rolled her head on her neck, looked up at the rain and across the bridge at the Tachas Touchas heyimas… her eyes darted about as if looking for any other task she might undertake before facing her family.

Xellos put a hand on her shoulder. “If it helps,” he murmured, “The whole town is at your mercy. It would take you barely a day to kill every human in it and tear every building to the ground, even without my help. But of course, I'd be happy to help. They could do nothing to stop you.”

Swallow looked at him sideways. “So? It's not like they'd stop arguing with me once they're dead.”

“Maybe not. But it's worth bearing in mind.”

Swallow's mother Agate made her household in the ground floor of Five Toads House. Swallow told him it had been the upper floors once, when she was young, but when her father had begun to be ill he couldn't manage stairs anymore, so they'd moved downstairs. And after Salt Wind had died, Agate had been Speaker for the Doctors, so she'd stayed downstairs so people could fetch her in a hurry, and then Adsevin and Pond had had their son Bounce, and a new baby could also involve late-night disturbances, and now things were settled in their new pattern and the upper floors had been taken over by a set of aunts and cousins who had begun by occupying the other half of the ground floor and outgrown it.

“You never mentioned: what does Adsevin's name mean?” Xellos was only mildly curious, but Swallow liked to talk. Might as well give her a question she knew the answer to, before she had to keep secrets again.

“It's a planet, like Kemel. You can see Adsevin – _either_ Adsevin – in the very early morning or the early evening. The planet shines brightest around the time of the Moon wakwa.”

“Ah. And is your sister, too, seasonal, or only crepuscular?”

“I've never known her to care much about the weather. Here's Five Toads house: third in from the left, with the boulder beside the steps.” Swallow greeted the boulder briefly with a brush of the hand and another murmured word, mounted those same steps, and opened the door.

Beyond the door was a blast of light, heat, and noise. The sensory effect was rather like that of witnessing the Inverse breaking into a temple, only with the roles between human and architecture reversed. The tumult and dazzle gradually resolved themselves into a room not unlike the one that had hosted them in Chulkumas; more books on the shelves, perhaps, rag rugs on the floor instead of woven ones; wooden paneled walls rather than adobe, toys rather than spindles sitting on the bench-chest. The room was full of people, but most of the noise came from only one of them: a boy of perhaps four or five years, who careened into Swallow's legs and ricocheted away again, clapping and shouting. “Swallow! Aunt Swallow-bin! Oh, I'm so glad to see you! Did you bring me anything? Do you want to see me do the Ant Dance? Guess what? Swallow!”

“So you are here, Bounce,” Xellos said mildly. The boy stopped abruptly, goggling, then scooted over to the woman standing near the stove and glued himself to her side. Xellos nodded at her. “And you must be Adsevin.”

He probably would have guessed even without the presence of the nephew. Swallow and her sister looked very much alike, allowing for differences in lifestyle. Adsevin was paler-skinned; possibly a matter of indoor living rather than genetics, and heavier set, ditto. Her hair curled even more tightly than Swallow's, but perhaps that allowed the combs to grip it better, because Adsevin's hair was more successfully contained. “I am Adsevin,” she said, rather slowly, as if she thought he were slightly deaf. “And you are the first man Swallow has ever brought home to meet her mother. Or is it not like that?”

Xellos flicked a sideways glance at Swallow, who was blushing. “For now,” he said, “let us assume that it is like that.”

Adsevin appeared to mull this over, and Xellos took a quick inventory of the other people in the room. The man by the door there in his early thirties was almost certainly Adsevin's husband, Pond. He wasn't quite sure about the girl of thirteen or so who knelt near the bench with the toys on it. Either of the two women in the book corner might have been Swallow's mother Agate, but he was inclined to think it was the nearer one; less for family resemblance and more for the amount of irritation she was emitting at the prospect of having to deal with Xellos in her household. 

“Everyone,” Swallow said quickly, “this is Xellos Coyote's Son, of no house. He will be staying with me for a while.”

The woman he thought was Agate confirmed his guess a moment later by heaving herself to her feet and saying, sharply, “My daughter is here. Is there anything fit to eat in this house?”

Swallow set her bags down just inside the door, and took a step forward. “Only my heart is hungry to see you all,” she said; it must be a ritual, then. She leaned forward and embraced her mother warmly, but decorously, then turned to do the same to Adsevin. As she hugged her sister, her scar glowed white on her cheek for a moment; she was doing some minor magic or other. No one seemed to notice but Xellos, though. Swallow patted Bounce on the head and then turned toward the book corner. “And you, too, my grandmother's sister!” She raised her voice slightly. The old woman nodded vaguely and then went back to looking Xellos over from behind her book. Swallow just waved at Pond without saying anything – was that a matter of inclination, or protocol? – and went on to the girl. “And look who put on undyed clothing while I was away! Is your name still Jayfeather?” The girl nodded shyly.

All these people, Xellos noted, were being very cautious and courteous with each other. Agate said, “Be welcome. We cleared out the fourth room for the two of you to use.” 

“Thank you,” Swallow said, simply. “This way, Xellos.” The girl Jayfeather and Swallow's great-aunt took their leaves as Swallow picked up her packs again and headed for the inner door. She and Pond nodded to each other as she passed him, and Xellos did the same.

The Fourth Room was, literally, the fourth room down the long narrow hall that ran from the front to the back of the house. Swallow lit it, absentmindedly, with a glowing wisp of magic wrapped around the fingers of her left hand, making Xellos smile as he undid his boots and arranged their baggage. The second room, Swallow explained as she rummaged in her gift bag, was Pond's workroom; he was in the Glass Art, it seemed, and did small, lampworked pieces at home. The third room was primarily a sleeping room, and the fourth was sometimes, as now, a guest room, and was otherwise used for storage, both by Agate's household and the one that occupied both the upstairs and the rooms across the hall. The head of this other household was Swallow's deaf great-aunt, whose name, it seemed, was Mohair. She had daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters (Jayfeather being one of the latter) and all fifteen of them still ate supper together most days, though if the family got much larger someone might decide to move out. Swallow finished her orientation – both social and architectural – by pointing out the toilet room next door, and the stairs that led down to the storage cellars and the washroom (Tachas Touchas did not have wash houses, it seemed), and the ones that led up into Mohair's domain.

The bedding was already laid out; Swallow simply dropped their own bedrolls in a corner and rummaged for the embroidered Klatsaand satchel she used for storing souvenirs. She pulled her boots off and rubbed her feet, and looked at Xellos. “Is there anything you want to ask about, before we rejoin the others?”

Xellos paused in the process of unlacing his own boots and pondered, stroking his chin. “Are there actual rules about talking to Pond?”

“Rules?”

“Like, don't speak to another woman's man, or that kind of thing.”

“What a crazy idea!” Swallow shook her head. “Pond's just quiet, is all. He likes to take things in for a long time before he says anything much. Rather like you, that way, actually, only not as smug. He'll probably start trying to sound you out in the next few days, though.”

“We've pretty much invited ourselves in; how much say do Pond or Adsevin have in whether they share their household with a new brother in law?”

“We're not married,” Swallow said, automatically, “so the term is 'brother-for-now.' Agate is the only one who can tell us to leave, but she'd listen to Adsevin. Adesvin and Pond and Bounce could move out, if they wanted to, and if Pond got mad enough he could go move back in with his mother for a while.”

“Rather hard on Pond, that arrangement.”

“Not as hard as what the women of the Dayao or the Folded Hills people have to put up with, but yes. Don't make it harder on him, eh?” Swallow pulled a pair of silver hairpins out of her bag and wound her hair into a knot, shoving the pins in place in place to hold it. 

“Of course not.” There was really nothing to be gained from antagonizing Pond, anyway, not even amusement. Destabilizing Agate's rule and freeing Swallow from whatever grip her mother still had on her were both better achieved by befriending Pond, and, if events warranted it, possibly seducing him. The pins in Swallow's hair had already rotated some forty-five degrees clockwise from their original position, and Xellos reached over and plucked them out again. “Let's save our futile gestures for something that matters, shall we, _giyakwunshe?”_

Swallow rolled her eyes, but made no attempt to regain the pins. Xellos ran a comb briefly through his own hair, and then they made their way back to the main room.

********

The others, too, seemed to have regained some composure during the newcomers' absence. Or at least Bounce had. He capered and tumbled around Swallow as she came in, chanting, “Presents! Presents!” When Adsevin chided him, he did not so much settle down as decrease the radius of his sphere of action, with a corresponding increase in velocity. Swallow caught her sister's eye, and when Adsevin nodded, pulled out another little felted animal and handed it to him.

“Oh!” Bounce exclaimed, “A coyote!” He grinned.

Pond looked briefly over his son's shoulder. “Looks more like a hechi-dog to me,” he said.

“The coyote is _pretending_ to be a hechi-dog.” Bounce said with dignity. But after another minute or two he had introduced his new toy to a clay turtle that rattled when one picked it up, and a soft, floppy gray creature that might once have been almost anything, and was whispering himself a story.

Adsevin got another poetry book; Pond a small bauble of heavy glass that Xellos would have called a paperweight and Swallow called a “hehole-no.” While fine in themselves, it occurred to Xellos suddenly that these and the wad of ikat scarves and things that would doubtless be distributed to Great-aunt Mohair and her descendants tomorrow were, in point of fact, a pretty small haul, in proportion to the time and effort Swallow had put into her Klatsaand journey. As he understood it, Finders who went out that far were generally expected to come back with a trade agreement: fish or rice or honey or rubber or cotton, in exchange for wine or lemons or salt or glassware. Or they were treasure hunters, coming back with copper or silver or ancient, salvaged solar cells. Swallow had come back with pretty trinkets. And with a scar spiraling out from one cheek, and a mysterious and untrustworthy _giyakwunshe,_ and unheard of power: unwelcome gifts, all. And with one other thing.

Swallow put a carved, hinged box of redwood, the size of a loaf of bread, in front of Agate. “This is what I went to Klatsaand for,” she said. Inside were vials of clear liquid and others of powdery spores, and a stack of thin books bound in limp cloth. “This is a way to use poison mold to quiet muscle spasms without completely paralyzing someone, and they have subsidiary uses treating recurring headaches, and the laughing-weeping sickness. I wrote down everything of it that can be written, and I will show what I can show of it to you, if you want to see.”

Xellos was not entirely sure Swallow had learned yet how to process the input of her empathic sense in enough depth to follow the full panalopy of Agate's emotions as they chased each other under her impassive frown: excitement, gratitude, resentment, pride, curiosity, envy. What Agate said was, “Why give it to me? Why not the Doctors?”

Swallow might or might not be able to perceive the undercurrents directly, but she knew her mother. “You are still the best doctor in Tachas Touchas,” she said, “and I thought that perhaps you might be more willing to take the gift from my hands than some others would be. Besides, what is here is not complete. The songs will most of them have to be remade, for instance. They're Klatsaand songs.”

“Indeed?” But Agate's mouth made a small, tight smile as she closed the lid of the box. “Well. Time to set the table.”

*******

Dinner was baked himpi in cornmeal dough, baked squash, sauteed kale, and anecdotes. More Klatsaand doctors and less Inverse, in this company, although Swallow made a glancing reference to Zelgadis as someone who had been damaged by an experimental practice that might, if better understood, still be beneficial. Agate caught Swallow up on the doings of various people in the town and how much better they might be doing if they would only follow Agate's advice. More serious talk resumed after dinner and after a drooping, cranky, but still excited Bounce had been put back to bed for the sixth time. There was wine again; Xellos declined. Some thin, flat cushions emerged from one of the bench-chests to sit on. The rain outside had turned to mist, silent except for the rattling gurgle of the gutter. Adsevin took one of the oil lanterns off the table and hung it carefully from a bracket that emerged from the side of the bookshelf. No one made any move to start drumming or writing poetry.

Agate cleared her throat a little. “So, Xellos Coyote's Son. Where does my daughter find a no-house man who speaks Kesh so well?”

“We met in Tuberhuny,” Xellos began to say, but Swallow spoke at the same time.

“He came here from across the rainbow.”

Everyone, Xellos included, looked at her in some alarm. He considered the timing of this revelation to be ill-judged. It was one thing to mention his origins in the depths of a heyimas, during what might be termed a professional consultation. Now, he thought, Swallow was simply trying to prove herself to people who had ceased to regard her seriously years ago.

“At least, I think so,” Swallow went on, and hurried into an accounting of the last few months very similar to the one she had given Mouse Dance. Xellos fixed his face into an expression of mild concern, mirroring the ones around him, as if he had never heard such a wild folderol in his life.

The differences between this recitation and the previous one were rather striking, really. Vaguer timelines all around, and no mention whatsoever of the “stolen” Carrion Gyre. Swallow carefully minimized her own role in the healing ritual for Zelgadis, leaving an impression that she really hadn't done anything much at all except be there at the wrong time and place. On the other hand, she was more detailed than she had been about what her new powers entailed. “I can smell – or sometimes it's more like touch – other people's emotions,” she said. “And sometimes I can see a little way out of where we are and into what will be, or was... for instance, I know you're pregnant, my sister,” she said to Adsevin, “And I know that this time finally the baby will be healthy, except her right foot won't have any toes. But otherwise, she'll be fine. And I know Agate has a polyp in her colon, but it's growing very, very slowly and won't make any trouble for a long time yet. And I know the oil in the hanging lamp came from Ready's olive trees, and the oil in the lamp on the table came from Lilac's.” Her words were coming more rapidly now, and Agate made ready to stand up, but Xellos put a hand on Swallow's back, first, and she quietened.

“I see...” Agate's voice was very quiet and soothing. “Do you ever hear the Rainbow people speaking to you, my daughter?”

Swallow's mouth twisted. “Have I gone crazy, do you mean?”

“I didn't say that.” Agate held herself very still.

 

Swallow stood up and blew out the hanging lamp, then stood with her lips pressed together and began to wind another glowing thread of magic around her hand. Her scar began to glow white, and then it seemed to ramify, with little tendrils seeming to detach themselves from the main spiral and spread across her skin. When the tendrils reached her hand, Swallow brushed her thumb over her knuckles, pulling the light off them in a thread. With a flicking gesture, she sent the little skein of light spinning into a ball, and then sent it floating around the room, bobbing like a duck on a current. Xellos had to admit: the crisp, cold, shock of the moment was delectable, however complicated the long-term consequences would be.

“What I am seeing right now,” Swallow told them, in a voice that shook a little, “is a ball of light the size of an oak gall, floating here and there in the room, and your faces, shining in that light, and your eyes following it as it moves. Perhaps you are seeing something else; a bat, or a moth. If that's true, then I wish you'd tell me. If I've gone crazy, if I can't trust my mind anymore, well, that is troubling, but it doesn't frighten me as much as what I may do if I'm sane.”

 

******

The fraught revelations of the previous night were not mentioned in the morning; it was unclear whether they were being edited out of the family story, or merely digested. All the same, Agate and Adsevin both elected to find work to do in Five Toads House, instead of the workshops. Agate shelled nuts, one-handed, while her other hand turned the pages of Swallow's Klatsaand notebooks. Adsevin mended clothing. Swallow moved in and out, tending to Fefinum and paying her respects to the rest of Great-Aunt Mohair's family. Bounce was thrilled to have two new adults in the house with no immediate duties beyond paying attention to him. While he asked Swallow for more stories of her travels, he was far more interested in showing off his own accomplishments. He sang songs, danced his Ant Dance and several variations, wrote his name and Swallow's on scraps of cornhusk, and engaged Swallow in a slightly mad conversation about how to write Xellos'. While the name was entirely pronounceable in Kesh, the 'Z' phoneme was normally used as a grammatical modifier, and only at the end of a word. Its written symbol was not a letter, but a punctuation mark. Bounce finally decided on “Shelloz,” and then had to be reminded to clean his ink brush before he dragged his Aunt and “Uncle-for-now” out to see the penful of himpi in his charge.

Swallow made suitably admiring noises over the little sausage-shaped furballs, and Bounce regaled them with a long, involved, and largely incoherent account of a scheme he'd had for attracting wild himpi into the pen as well, except he was afraid they'd dig tunnels and the tame ones would escape and a dog might get them. “Well, you realize,” Xellos said, crouching a little to speak with Bounce on the level, “Wild and tame himpi aren't like wolves and dogs; they can't interbreed. They're more like, oh, wild sheep and deer, that have come to look a bit like each other from living in the same kind of place.”

“Oh,” said Bounce. “Oh, well.”

“I didn't know that,” said Swallow. “How did you find that out?”

Xellos straightened up again and turned a little to look in her direction. “I no longer remember how the matter came to my attention,” he said, shrugging. “Only, once upon a time, wild himpi were called prairie dogs, and tame himpi were called guinea pigs, and their respective ancestries were common knowledge.”

Bounce giggled at this, and then tried a louder, more forced sounding laugh, to show that he knew you were supposed to laugh at jokes. “Ha-ha-ha-ha that's so silly! Himpi aren't pigs _or_ dogs!”

“No more they are,” Xellos agreed peaceably.

Next, Bounce wanted to play a game called 'going round the nine towns the hard way,' the equipment for which apparently resided in the Serpentine heyimas. They stopped by the house to pick up vests – this time Swallow grabbed one for Xellos, too – and walked down the hill, with Swallow and Bounce waving at neighbors. Most waved back. One elderly woman glared and puffed out her cheeks, blowing air at them. Swallow rolled her eyes. “What a frightening world you must live in, Toyon,” she murmured.

“Why did she do that, Aunt Swallow?”

“She thinks we're sick. She doesn't want to breathe our outbreath.”

“ _Are_ you sick?” 

Swallow huffed out her own breath of air. “Not any kind of sick that Toyon needs to worry about,” she said finally. She let her hand land on Bounce’s head and ruffled his hair. “Nor you, either.”

Bounce found other playmates in the heyimas, rather to Xellos' relief, since the game he had wanted to play turned out to be a variation of chutes and ladders. The Tachas Touchas heyimas was one pentagonal chamber, under its four-sided pyramid roof, the walls lined with cupboards and shelves below and painted with murals of wild plants and stones above. Swallow introduced Xellos to Looks High, a man of fifty or so and Speaker of the Serpentine for Tachas Touchas, a stern, formal person, and then continued her tour of the town, poking her head in the library and a few workshops before heading out into the muddy fields. The rain today was only fog, and much of Tachas Touchas was out pruning or weeding or mending walls. Swallow showed Xellos which patches of ground “lived” in Agate's or Mohair's households.

The various gardeners and wall-builders looked up briefly as they passed, some with poorly veiled curiosity, some with open hostility. One or two of them came up to Xellos, speaking careful and stilted Tok. A boy of sixteen or so turned to a friend afterward and said, in Kesh, loud enough for Swallow and Xellos both to hear, “Wow, I guess she really _fuck_ anyone that stands on two legs to pee.”

Swallow snorted amusement, and Xellos, smiling, called out, in rapid Kesh, “Are you saying you should have been next? I think you just blew your chances, letting her hear you!” He savored the boys' answering embarrassment. Nobody could do embarrassment like an adolescent. 

Tachas Touchas was small enough to have visible generation gaps; no children between Bounce's age and Jayfeather's, none between the tactless boy and Swallow's agemates, and so on in stairsteps up into the ones who were growing elderly. Swallow asked various persons where to find someone called “Bridge,” and received various replies. She looked at the work going around her, and rolled her shoulders.

“Once I find Bridge – that's Speaker for the Finders here – I'll probably grab Fefinum and help with the fence,” she told Xellos. “We'll get the last of the introductions out of the way in the next day or two, I expect.”

“And then?”

“Well, I need to dance the Finder's Return; I don't think they'll pull you in on that but I'm not sure, and Agate's almost certain to want to hold a bringing-in, and there's learning with you and the scholars of the Serpentine..." She grinned and spread her hands in a loose gesture "and I suspect eventually I'll get fed up with the whole place and go back to Chulkumas, but maybe I'm wrong.”

“And what do you imagine I will be doing during that time?”

Swallow looked at him. “You're a hundred times my age, Xellos. Surely you can think of something you can do to make yourself useful.”


	8. The Men of Tachas Touchas

Swallow had made it clear that she intended to stay in her childhood home until at least the feast of Sunreturn, some six weeks away, and considering the walking-on-eggshells atmosphere that prevailed in the household, she fit herself into its routines of the household with remarkable ease. Her ongoing disagreements with Agate disappeared into that deep, small-town silence that grew in any place remote enough that one's survival depended on being able to cooperate with people one despised. Xellos was very fond of that silence, which nurtured baroque grudges and could isolate the victims of the most outrageous crimes behind everyone's reluctance to confront the perpetrators. Swallow, he noticed, had a different repertory of Klatsaand stories for her Tachas Touchas family than for her Chulkumas one. Less was said of their scientific cleverness. Instead, people wanted to hear about their follies.

For instance, the Klatsaanders were astrologers, given to cosmic explanations for the least little thing. Swallow read from a little book that summarized the properties of the different stars and planets, and their influence on humanity. The Klatsaand doctors were skilled chemists, but also stargazers. “I could never get the doctors to admit it,” Swallow told Adsevin and some of the “upstairs cousins” one day, “But I think they invented a lot of omens to get people to do sensible things. And they divide you up, not just by what day in a moon you were born, and what moon in a year, but what time of day, too, and oh, all sorts of things.”

“Ohu!” Jayfeather laughed. “What do they do about twins?”

“Abort them, usually.” Swallow shrugged, and asked Bounce how the himpi were doing.

Five Toads House, in its everyday guise, was a busy, bustling place. The boundary between Agate's domain and Mohair's was quite permeable; Jayfeather, especially, and her sister (or was it first cousin?) Cat Watching, often showed up without notice to keep an eye on Bounce for a while, or simply to have an emotional monsoon somewhere away from whichever pair of eyes had set them off. Agate, though acknowledged head of the household, spent the least amount of time within its walls; she was busy in the Doctors' Lodge. Adsevin, also a doctor, managed to be somewhat less busy; or rather, she made time for Bounce. She and Pond shared much of the routine house and garden work; in addition, Pond might work at his glassblowing at home or in the workshop, depending on whether he needed the kiln or only the little torch. 

Pond seemed to be the chief housekeeper. He cooked two suppers out of three, was the one to notice when something needed cleaning or fixing, made sure Bounce put on his heyimas vest before he went for his lessons and that he took it off again before he went to play with the dogs or the himpi, knew where everyone else was at any given time. Pond's plans were the first to give way, should something urgent come up, and he was thanked often and consulted rarely. In short, anyone in the Barrier Lands would have agreed that Adsevin had an excellent wife. The joke didn't work so well in the Valley, where the division of labor was largely ungendered. Every young husband was expected to be under his mother-in-law's thumb to some degree, and housekeeping was listed as one of the Arts, like pottery or musicianship. Housekeepers, like musicians and unlike potters, lacked a professional organization, but Pond was respected.

Swallow, despite the fogs and rain, appointed herself the outdoorswoman of the little family unit. With Fefinum's assistance, she took on the garden and also the gathering, rambling out for mushrooms and fiddleheads and late berries. Or else she disappeared into the heyimas for half a day at a time. Xellos accompanied her sometimes on her rambles, more rarely into the heyimas. He and Looks High came to a tentative agreement about Swallow's astral training. Looks High and a woman called Mouse Dance (it seemed this was a common name for visionaries, evoking the feeling of a small person in a maze of tall grasses) were teaching her “re-visioning:” how to recover her memories of the moments when she had seen the world “As the Hawk sees it,” and how to talk about the Astral Plane (or rather, the Houses of the Sky) to other people. Xellos attended sometimes to learn the local vocabulary, but most of what Swallow was doing with Looks High was useless, so far as he was concerned. It had been centuries since anyone in the Valley had enough magic to do anything on the Astral Plane but look around, so all the heyimas training was about how to see clearly and report back to the “Houses of the Earth.” To judge by Swallow's training, the reports had been hopelessly garbled for quite some time. While Dynast might not have been insulted to have his realm known as the Hawk's House, particularly in a realm where the eagles seemed to be extinct, surely calling it the House of Eternity would have been too much flattery even for him. _No, scratch that, he'd be delighted. Just don't say it in his sisters' hearing._

For his part, Xellos continued to teach Swallow the uses of power; its shaping and control, when she would let him. She dug in her heels any time she couldn't practice a spell without “killing people” en masse, even rats or gnats or poison oak. But she could call up a wind, now, or light a fire, or levitate herself or other objects. And there was a certain logic to emphasizing fiddly, precise work, too: learning the habits of concentration and control before handling dangerous amounts of power.

Frustratingly, Swallow still failed to draw power from anyone's emotions but Xellos'. He was inclined to fault a squeamishness similar to the one that kept her from learning the Zelas Brid or any of the other serious spells, but as long as the block remained, it added layers of paradox to the work; the worse Swallow did at something and the angrier he got at her, the more power she had. The better she did, the harder it was to suppress a surge of pride. If he saw her doing well, and allowed himself to be happy with it, the power sputtered out like a hose full of bubbles. So if she was going to get any real practice in, she had to do it without Xellos watching.

All of which meant that his primary job, as he saw it, took very little time; he had to find something to do with the rest of it. Finding a way to use it strategically took some thought. Should he insinuate himself, or make himself disliked? Should he get himself and Swallow kicked out of the Valley before she had a chance to grow new roots here, or should he take the slower approach and trust her to see for herself how poor a fit she was? He decided on the latter for a number of reasons, some of which made him wince. He could not afford to let Swallow hate him too much yet. If she got frightened or angry enough to kill him, maybe the power surge would be enough to Turn her at last. Maybe the sudden draining of power through the bond when Xellos died would make her desperate enough to finally reach out and start pulling from less comfortable sources. Maybe Lord Beastmaster, fulfilling her promise to ensure that Xellos' end would be complete, with nothing left to reincarnate and cause trouble later, would find some way to make use of his giyakwunshe. Or maybe Swallow would die too, and his last effort would be wasted. Maybe the bond would seal itself off and leave her as she was before, a straightforward provincial trader, with nothing left of her adventures but an elaborate scar and a cautionary tale. He didn't want to risk it. Besides, insinuating was more fun.

Pond was the obvious place to start, since he was the one who benefited the most directly from having an extra pair or two of unobligated hands around. In fact, from Pond's point of view even Xellos' outsider status might be seen as an advantage, because it meant he had nothing whatsoever to do with the preparations for the upcoming Sun Wakwa, and thus many fewer demands on his time. So, when he was not accompanying Swallow on her expeditions and trying to drum a little more magical theory into her mulish little head, Xellos put himself in places where Pond could find him easily and grab him as needed. Being useful to Pond was easy. Making use _of_ Pond was harder. Phlegmatic and stodgy, Pond never asked questions and rarely even spoke. His movements were both unhurried and efficient. While Xellos caught occasional whiffs of interest from him when someone else was grilling Swallow or himself, Pond displayed no curiosity in private. His communications with his “brother-for-now” were almost entirely instructional: “Let the polenta get a little thicker.” “Shift your feet a little wider and you won't be so likely to throw your back out.” “I like that knot; can you show me how to tie it?” Xellos wasn't entirely sure the man was any brighter than the Gabriev; he didn't get confused so often, but then, Pond, unlike the swordsman, never ventured far enough from his home ground to get out of his depth.

Xellos had been there about three weeks when Pond first made a gesture that could be interpreted as friendly. He'd been introducing Xellos to the intricacies of the mechanical laundry tub in the basement of Five Toads House, and he'd cleared his throat at the sight of one stained sheet. “Um, you should know,” said Pond, “When you and Swallow... well, we can usually hear you.”

Xellos cupped the back of his head with one hand and looked down. It was a gesture that gave an impression of blushing without his actually needing to be particularly embarrassed: very useful. “Oh, dear, how awkward! We'll try to be quieter.”

Pond shrugged. “Nah, s'not that... it's just, I kind of noticed... you don't usually last very long.”

Xellos blinked.

The other man _was_ blushing, making his brown cheeks shine. “And I'm told Swallow can be kind of... demanding. If you – that is, I know a trick or two that might be useful....” He trailed off and clanged the lid shut on the laundry tub.

Xellos recovered some portion of aplomb. “Ehhhhh... that is a very... a very kind offer, Pond. I- I'll think about that, and maybe have a talk with my _giyakwunshe,_ in a general sort of way...”

Pond shrugged again. “Not my business, really. No offense meant.”

“None taken.” And there, so far as Pond was concerned, the matter ended.

Xellos spent some more time thinking about it, though. He was not terribly worried by the pattern Pond had noticed; his and Swallow's copulations tended to be of short duration because the two of them tended to set each other off. The push-pull yes-no games of – well, call it courtship... took place mostly on the moral front. The physical was more like sliding down a bank into a pool: straightforward, intense, and tremendous fun if one was in the mood, but not a realm requiring negotiation. Xellos constructed an entire mental scenario in which a request for and carefully calibrated reaction to Pond's tutelage was the first step in breaking up Pond's and Adsevin's marriage, but it was a rote strategic exercise, without a lot of heat to it. He had already decided he wasn't going to try and get banished from the Valley just yet. Maybe later, though.

He did mention Pond's offer to Swallow. She didn't stop sniggering for nearly twenty minutes and Xellos had to drink half a pitcher of lemonade to get the taste out of his mouth.

******

A more useful – or at least, a more familiar – sort of alliance sprang from a confrontation. Xellos was on his way back from returning a book to the Blue Clay heyimas and paused, as several other people did, to watch a crew of adolescents working their way around the “Dancing Place,” as the main public clearing on the heyimas side of town was called. The children were decorating trees: hanging little glass baubles on the branches, and brightly dyed puffs of wool, and elaborate little constructions of copper wire, oak galls, beads, and feathers. One earnest quartet strung tiny electric lights among the branches; Xellos was still not entirely sure where the bulbs came from, but they had to be costly, and the light crew was handling the strands with great care and frequent discussions. Xellos drifted nearer as he headed back toward the bridge at the hinge, hoping to overhear, but one of the boys caught him at it. He turned to glare. “What are you staring at, White Clown?” The name, in Kesh, sounded like spitting: _s'fatz._ The boy was the one Xellos had embarrassed his first day in town, he realized. Had the poor thing been brooding all this time?

Xellos fluttered his eyelashes. “What you are doing is interesting. But I assure you, I was not staring.” He let his eyes open slightly wider. “When I stare, you will know it.”

The boy puffed his chest out. “You were too staring. What were you up to – hoping to get a sight of Poppy up a ladder, maybe?”

Poppy was probably the girl with the long braids, who was twittering nervously a few paces away. Xellos did not look at her. He shrugged. “You are just as pretty as she is, and no, I was just curious. I've seen trees done up this way once or twice before, but it was a very long time ago.”

“Think you're smart, do you?” The boy took a step closer, puffing out his chest.

“Yes, actually.” Xellos was tempted to push the argument even further, just for the rich, juicy anger that only an adolescent could call up. It would be unwise, though. “Look,” he said, in the patient tone Kesh adults tended to use when children overstepped, “You are doing sacred work – at least, I assume so – and this is the Dancing Place. It's not the time to pick fights. Suppose you all come find me later and we can talk about what's bothering you.”

The boy hissed. “Oh, we'll talk all right. We'll talk, and you'll listen.”

Xellos waved a languid hand. “Yes, yes. All well and good. I expect I'll be spending the next little while in Mohair's field up by the Touwats oak grove. I'll see you when you're ready.” He strolled off.

His and Swallow's task in the field today was to turn the compost heap at one end of it and distribute some of the most thoroughly rotted mulch in among the furrows. A month or more after the end of harvest time as it was, nothing but Swallow's need to get out of Five Toads House for a while could have given the task any urgency, but Xellos did not complain. The crowded rooms of Five Toads House offered very little in the way of privacy, and besides, the compost heap was a good place for Swallow to practice her kinetic work. They both stirred at the mound with long-handled, shallow spades, occasionally transferring a black shovelful or two into a little hand-barrow. When the barrow filled, Xellos trundled it over to the field and Swallow would call up one of her little whirlwinds to scatter the fertilizer broadcast. Then they would use their spades to pry the wheels of the barrow out of the mud again, (Swallow's magical control not yet being trustworthy for objects that you wanted to stay in one piece,) and after that they scraped the clinging mud off the spades as best they could. A few weeks' acquaintance with wet adobe was giving Xellos a new understanding of the Kesh tendency to ascribe personality and intentions to things like dirt. Adobe, for instance, wanted to hold on. Whatever Adobe touched, Adobe clung to like the Inverse with a treasure chest. 

As they were wrestling the empty barrow out of the field for the second time, Xellos asked, “Is a 'white clown' something specific?”

Swallow rolled her shoulders and shoved her straggling hair off her forehead and back under her hat, leaving smears of adobe on all three surfaces: forehead, hair, hat. “White clowns? Yes, you'll see them in a day or two, as the Twenty-One Days get going. They're creepy. Why?”

“Someone called me that today: a boy, about fifteen – the angry one with the freckles.”

“That'll be Stag.” Swallow yanked the barrow over another bump and got it settled by the compost heap again. “He's not Speaker for the Bay Laurel Lodge yet, but everyone expects he will be one day, if he ever calms down enough.” She shook her head, fondly. “I used to watch him when he was little, the way Jayfeather watches Bounce, you know. It still seems funny to me, that he should grow up into a person called Stag. Is he making trouble, then?”

Xellos shrugged. “Only for himself, I think. We're meeting later to have certain difficulties out. Nothing I can't handle.”

Swallow watched him narrowly. “And how much of this trouble did you help him make, Coyote's Son? Is he likely to bring in the rest of the Bay Laurel Lodge over this?”

The images this question brought up gave Xellos pause. If things got sticky, he could no longer fade away, nor disintegrate anyone from a distance. On the other hand, the Bay Laurel boys, however young and fit, were not trained fighters. “Are they likely to actually try to kill me?”

Swallow nearly dropped her shovel. “No!” 

Xellos took a moment to treasure her shock and outrage. They were both getting harder to obtain than they had been when he and Swallow first met. “Well then,” he said, “there's no need to worry. I can turn any other possible outcome of a meeting with Stag and whatever company he brings to advantage.”

He could see the questions and objections lining up behind Swallow's lips, starting, probably, _with what exactly do you mean by 'advantage?'_ She started to open her mouth, closed it again, and then breathed out hard through her nose. She opened her mouth again and spat on the ground, and of all her arguments only one word made it out. _“Men.”_

******

Stag didn't show up until an hour or so before sunset. Xellos and Swallow had finished with the compost heap and were trying to rinse off the worst of the muck. Xellos made this into another practice session for Swallow: she was to call clear water from the puddles and the soaked ground. Thus far, they, along with the water Swallow had called, were still succumbing to the embrace of Adobe. So Xellos imagined that he was looking less than intimidating when Stag walked up to him and said, “Ready?”

Xellos bowed slightly. “Indeed.” He nodded to Swallow, slipped his bare feet into a pair of rope-soled sandals, (because Adobe loved his boots, but the feelings were not mutual) and said, mildly, “I may be late to supper tonight; come find me if I'm not back in by moonrise.”

Swallow tapped his arm and pointed straight up. Xellos looked. “Ah,” he said, “My mistake. Well, come find me if I'm not back by moon _set_ , then.” Stag, nearby, snorted contemptuously.

Xellos followed Stag a little distance around the side of Fir Mountain, using his shovel as a walking stick in the places where the footing was less certain. They came to a pasture, where several other boys waited. They all stood very stiffly, making themselves look as large as possible. Their wide Kesh eyes made them look particularly nervy. Xellos bowed to them, too. One of the boys handed Stag a long-handled pipe. “Will you smoke with us, No-House man?”

The pipe smelled of tobacco, not cannabis. This was not a chance for everyone to relax and get to know each other. “If you like,” Xellos said. He took a single, courteous puff, and waited. The boys introduced themselves: Stag, Still Walking, Mica, Hound. Only Stag took the pipe; this was to be a private duel with witnesses, then. Much simpler than an attempted gang beat-down. Although, in either context, the knife hanging from Stag's belt was a little concerning.

“We think it's time somebody explained a few things to you, No-house man,” Stag began. “We maybe don't make war very often, here in the Valley, but we're not weak. We don't just let some outsider come in and take what belongs to us. If you think you're coming back with an army, later on, you're all going to run into trouble.”

Xellos strongly suspected that the property at issue in this case was Swallow, but Stag couldn't say so; he had no claim on her, and knew it. Well, the boy wanted dignity and importance, and Xellos saw no reason to withhold them at the moment. “I am here as an exile, not a scout,” he said. “My people all live more than a thousand miles beyond the Range of Heaven, and if any of them have even heard of the Na Valley, they haven't told me so.” He had, in a few cases, told them, of course. But the Omorn peninsula was not of strategic interest to the Mazoku, now that the “City of Mind,” the Terrestrial Cybernet, had been halted in its incursions.

“Why'd they kick you out?” Stag accused.

“They didn't. A sacrifice was required to achieve certain ends, and I volunteered. I survived the completion of my mission, which had not been part of the original plan, and I went on from there.”

They were not, strictly speaking, chaos words, but there were words that adolescents responded to: _exile_ and _sacrifice_ were among them. Stag had to regather his bluster. “Well then. You can just move on from here, too.”

Xellos smiled. “I will move on when Swallow does. I don't call her _giyakwunshe_ for nothing.” He watched Stag splutter for a moment before provoking him again. “Listen,” Xellos went on, “The first time I heard you speak, you were insulting me, I won't say to my face, since you didn't know then that I speak Kesh. The next time, you accused me of having unsavory designs on one of your friends. If you want to fight, I don't mind, but I'm not about to change anything for the sake of an ill-mannered puppy.”

Stag blew tobacco smoke out of both nostrils and handed the pipe to Mica. “Let's fight then.”

The other three boys stepped back a way, giving the combatants some space. Xellos shifted his weight slightly and flexed his knees, watching. Stag bounced a little; the boy was coming into his man's growth and had a deep-chested, sturdy build like a wrestler's. He would, if he were smart, come in hard and fast, in hopes of getting under Xellos' longer reach. Xellos narrowed his eyes and focused on his empathic sense, trying to catch the moment before motion, when intentions shifted... Now. As Stag began to spring forward, Xellos dropped, taking most of his weight on his hands and swinging one foot around for a leg sweep. His sandal went flying. Stag sat down hard and had to scramble awkwardly to his feet while Xellos turned his shoulder and rolled back upright, kicking off the other sandal with plenty of time to spare.

Even so, Stag was fast enough to deflect a second kick, meant to lay him out flat, and spring away. They began to circle again. Xellos spared an instant's nostalgia for the days when he could have managed this without even breathing hard. Or at all. But the flashy moves had a purpose; this was an honor fight. If Stag couldn't win, (and Xellos didn't think even Stag thought he could) he had to prove he was tough enough to take the hurt, to keep coming back for more until he'd proved to the gods of teenage boys that he wasn't going to be pushed around. The more obviously outmatched Stag was, the sooner he could stop and still retain his honor. But Xellos' dignity was at stake here, too, and adult men in the Valley did not pound striplings to a pulp just to teach them a lesson. Nor would such a victory make it easier to play the clown and go overlooked. So. No severe injuries, if possible, and as little overt aggression as he could get away with; the story he wanted Tachas Touchas to make about him was the story of a _former_ warrior, an escaped slave, who had learned life in hard school and had come to the Valley seeking peace, but who carried danger still buried within him. The actual proportions of safety and danger in his makeup, he preferred that they misjudge.

Stag charged again, a low tackle. Xellos shoved down hard on the nearer of the boy's shoulders. Stag rolled with the blow and, coming up, aimed a fist at Xellos' chin and got a glancing blow at a forearm instead. The other three boys made a ragtag cheering section, chanting Stag's name and singing occasional scraps of rude songs. That they were cheering at the sight of a blocked punch meant they didn't think much of Stag's chances either. Xellos sprang into a leap, for a quick one-two kick at Stag's ribs. They landed, hard enough to knock some wind out but not hard enough to crack bone. If the opportunity arose, he would see if he could work in some arm-bar throws next time; those always looked spectacular. But the cheering section went silent. Stag was reaching for his knife.

With a delighted grin, Xellos stepped on the blade of the shovel, where it had been lying disregarded on the ground, and grabbed the handle as it arced upward. Now he could be impressive. The garden tool was lighter than Xellos' staff had been, and slenderer in the handle, but the balance was not all that different, overall. Xellos held it across his body. Stag ran toward him again, the elbow of his knife hand cocked backward. Xellos set his improvised staff whirling. Stag tried to dodge sideways around the reach of the shovel handle and Xellos switched hands, then caught the end just above the base of the spade and whacked Stag in the side, just below the ribs. Another step back, a few more whirls, and this time the shovel handle met the knife with a satisfying clack and the blade tumbled to the ground. As soon as it did, Xellos planted the shovel in the ground, too – handle within easy grabbing distance. 

Stag glowered at him, panting and clutching his bruised ribs, for a moment or two, then planted his feet and barreled forward in another useless attack. Xellos leaped up, using the shovel handle as a vaulting pole to help himself flip in the air and kick down at the boy’s shoulder blades on his way to landing. Stag went sprawling into the mud. Xellos landed heavily, and he had to bobble and flail a little to keep himself from sliding when one foot his a slick patch, but he stayed on his feet. He smiled gently down at his attacker. 

The boy, defeated but wholly uncowed, pried himself slowly upright to stand before him, glowering. Xellos’ stomach growled, partly in hunger, partly in nostalgia. Oh, that familiar mix of anger, shame, distrust, and admiration! Had he come to the Valley in his mazoku form, he would have tried to pull Stag into the expedition just for his nutritional value. Meanwhile, though, his feet were getting cold, and his shoulders resented being worked like that after they’d spent so much effort turning compost.

“Teach me how to do that,” Stag demanded.


	9. White Clowns

So that was Xellos' entree into the Bay Laurel Lodge, and high time too. It took a little maneuvering at the beginning to assure Kingsnake, a man of about thirty whose position might best be described as “Scoutmaster,” that Xellos was not planning to undermine his authority, nor start teaching the youth of Tachas Touchas corrupt foreign habits. In point of fact, he might well do some of both, but not in ways that bluff, hearty Kingsnake was likely to recognize. They were starting slowly anyway. Only about half the dozen or so Bay Laurel boys were interested in weaponizing bamboo rods, and the ones who were most passionately interested were also the most fervently involved in the religious life of the town. So this was not a time of year for rapid progress. It was simply not possible to learn more than the most basic basics of staff work and “Dance the Outer Sun” at the same time.

The Sun Wakwa took place over twenty-one days, leading to the winter solstice. The “Inner Sun” was a matter for scholars, elders, and some few Speakers of the various Houses and lodges, and took place in secret. The “Outer Sun” was for everyone else who wanted to participate, and many of those practices were demanding in the extreme. The deep rainy season was a time for asceticism, trance, seeking after visions. Swallow said that previously, when she had happened to be at home for the Sun, she would have joined one of the groups who went out hiking and camping around the 'wrong' side of the mountain, making the journey together in complete silence. That option being curtailed at present, she planned to attend one or two of the sessions where one took peyote or mushrooms at some point “a little closer in.” Another option, apparently, was a “long-singing,” which was just that – a session of group singing or chanting that lasted for days. Pond would be going to one of those soon; just now he was furiously baking and preparing an enormous kettle of soup that could simmer slowly over the next few days and feed anyone who needed to eat and didn't want to cook while he was out.

Xellos, trying to be useful in the face of all this busyness, swerved around Pond, stepped over a small village Bounce had constructed from books and baskets in the main room, apologized to Agate as they ducked past each other in the hallway, nodded politely to Cat Watching and Adsevin, who were hanging wreaths of holly and fir boughs on the railing of the stairs in a practice that was even older than they thought it was (though Valley wreathes were horseshoe shaped.) He made his way down to the washroom to do some ironing. It occurred to him that as the Sun got going, nearly a third of the population of Tachas Touchas was going to be down in the heyimas, getting stoned or hypnotized or something. In the darkest part of the rainy season, when the fields were fallow and the animals huddled in the barns, getting people out from under each others' feet seemed quite prudent, necessary, even. If they wanted to seek the ineffable at the same time, well, that was no worse use of their attention than, say, needlepoint, or writing novels, or any of the other hundred thousand activities humans had invented to stave off boredom. Xellos found himself enjoying the quiet laundry room and took a few extra minutes to sort everything and refold it a time or two before he headed back to the upstairs hubbub. Swallow met Xellos halfway up the stairs, took his armful of folded laundry from him, and told him, “Pond wants a bulb of garlic; can you fetch it for him, please?” So Xellos headed back down the stairs again on Swallow's errand, and she and the laundry headed up the stairs on his. And so the soup would taste of garlic, and everyone's shirts would be smooth and tidy until an hour after they were put on, or ten minutes, in Bounce's case. And it all took so much time. Why did humans make things so hard for themselves?

In no very good mood, therefore, Xellos joined the others at the table, to discover that the tension in the air, like the soup in the pot, had coalesced into something more appealing to humans; a kind of low-key excitement, shot through with nerves. There were plans afoot, it seemed, to go out to the Dancing Place afterward and view the trees, done up in their “First Night Lights.” The display, Xellos was given to understand, would diminish in splendor with each passing night of the Twenty-One Days until, on the solstice night, it was utterly dark. Why viewing the lights should carry with it such a strong undercurrent of fear, especially from Bounce, he did not quite comprehend, but doubtless the answer would be clear in time. Accordingly, once the dishes were washed there was a general scramble for stockings and shoes and coats. Xellos declined a heavy, itchy thing of sheepskin in favor of his own familiar cloak; however shabby it had grown, it was warm and comfortable.

The Dancing Place was worth seeing, too, even for someone with Xellos' limited appreciation for aesthetic effects. Stag and his little light crew had done a remarkable job. The trees blazed with light; each tiny electric bulb reflected a dozen, a score of times in glass baubles and beads of rain on the leaves and needles of the town trees. Swallow turned herself around and around, drinking in the sight. Bounce lived up to his name, chanting, “Pretty, Pretty, so pretty!”

Adsevin looked at each tree one at a time, scrutinizing the ornaments and smiling. “It's as though the stars had come down among us,” she said.

“I like how they set some of the lights back in the branches,” said Pond, “so it looks like the trees are shining with their own light, instead of the bulbs just marching along in a line like ants.”

Agate disagreed: “I liked what they did a couple of years ago,” she announced, “where they put the lights on those withy frames and made pictures of Coyote and Bear and Quail and everybody. People came clear down from Madidinou to see that.”

Adsevin, amused, leaned over to murmur in Xellos' ear. “ _One_ person came down from Madidinou. And Gray Bull has family here and would have come anyway.”

Swallow must have picked up on Adsevin's comment, or else had been led in a similar direction by her own whirling thoughts. “Pond,” she wanted to know, “Are you planning to go back to Hears the Beehives House at all this Sun?”

“Probably only the last night,” he replied, and then spotted someone else he wanted to talk to. Quite a few people had come out to catch the light show at its height, and they meandered to and fro, chatting with friends as they encountered them. It made a pretty scene, if more to the Princess Amelia's taste than Xellos'. The atmosphere of goodwill left a taste in his mouth rather like the garlic in the soup, and he did his best to turn his mind from it by directing his attention to Bounce and his peers. Only a few of the children Bounce's age were out with their families, and they all, like Adsevin's son, were anxious and clingy tonight. Had Bounce been afraid of the dark previously? Certainly Xellos had never noticed any sign of it. The adults chatted quietly, but they too were more... alert than seemed quite appropriate to the occasion. Why? Xellos relaxed into spy mode. There were secrets in this night.

Indeed, even as he was puzzling over this, a few voices at the edge of the crowd raised in shrieks, and everyone started moving toward the hinge bridge that linked the residential and sacred sides of the town. “Where's Bounce?” Adsevin had an edge of real panic in her voice.

“Under my cloak,” Xellos said calmly, and without moving. Since Bounce had wrapped all four limbs around both his legs and clung like a squirrel, he would have had difficulties moving even if he'd wanted to. 

Pond reached over and twitched the cloak to one side, and leaned down. “Here, _binyez_ , you can ride on my shoulders.” Pond stooped, Bounce scrambled, and then both of them were striding off toward the bridge. The women in the family and Xellos followed, briskly, but not in a mad dash. Xellos fell back a little and turned to see just what all the fuss was about. And so, looming up from a clear space in the crowd, shining white in the twinkling lights from the trees, he saw his first White Clown.

It certainly was, as Swallow might put it, “creepy.” And a demanding performance for the guiser who wore the puppet; requiring both strength and balance. Loose white trousers covered legs some seven or eight feet tall. Flapping white tatters at the bottom of its white robe blurred the movement of the knees a little, masking the proportions of leg to stilt. The white, grasping hands the size of serving trays must have been constructed of something lightweight like paper mache, since the “elbows” in the loose white sleeves bent at the distance of an outstretched human arm, meaning the rods that held the hands had to be manipulated by fingers and palm alone. The similarly oversized head must be similarly managed, rigged on top of a helmet or more likely a shoulder truss. In full daylight, the gauzy mesh around the “chest” that allowed the guiser to see what he was doing might be noticeable. But of course, it was not full daylight, and the white was full of shadows. The White Clown was a very fine piece of work. That face, though... Xellos knew that face very, very well. In Xellos' experience, most tribal bogeymen had furrowed brows, mouthfuls of sharp teeth, flared nostrils. The white clown was gaunt and slack, empty eyed. The face of famine, and refugee camps. That face belonged to violence as mulch belonged to mushrooms; that face on a victim might spur the victor to new heights of inventive cruelty, or it might transform itself the next instant into the berserk fury that stopped for nothing. Just where, or when, had the placid Kesh learned the face of desolation? “My,” he murmured, “my.”

A hand tugged at his elbow. “Come on,” Swallow insisted, “Watch from a window if you have to watch.” Xellos let her pull him along, looking back over his shoulder at her nightmare.

******

Indoors, it seemed, was a safe zone with regard to the White Clowns. Even Bounce allowed himself to be soothed. But none of the adults would talk sense about them while the boy was awake; they would only tell ghost stories. White Clowns came out in the fog, out of Puma's house. Any time of day or night during the Twenty-One Days of the Sun, you might look around and see a white shape, hear their stammering _du-du-du-du._ Better not to go out alone during the White Clown time, and if you did somehow get caught out alone and you heard the stammering, better run. Did you hear what happened over in Sinshan, not so long ago? A boy was going out to tend his gift seedlings, over on She Watches mountain, there, and his cousin was following behind, keeping an eye on him. But they got separated, somehow, and then she heard the stammering. The cousin, she buried herself under a pile of leaves like a mouse; she hid. She heard the sound come closer, and closer yet, and she held still as she could, and the stammering got louder and louder. She actually saw the White Clown's foot land on the ground just in front of her face, where she was looking out from her pile of leaves – that big white foot stepping just there as it went along. And when the stammering faded away and she was brave enough to look for her cousin, what do you think she found? No, no, the boy wasn't dead, not quite. She found him clinging to a tree branch like a squirrel, clinging and crying from eyes burned white; no pupil to them anymore, no iris, and all the rest of his life he never would say anything but _du-du-du-du...._

Eventually the tales went past the Clowns into other horrors: the story of Dira, a vampiric man (or possibly a giant tick) who was “still waiting out there in the woods, so they say...” The so-called “Time Outside the World,” when the Backward-Head people made slaves of everyone... “They had electrical wires in their ears, and were deaf. They smoked tobacco day and night, and were continually making war...” “...So he killed whatever he was afraid of... he made guns to shoot flies with, bullets to shoot fleas with.... he was afraid of grass and put stones where it was... he was especially afraid of water.... Little Man poisoned the Sea. The fish all died.” The Cities of San and Loss had died a long time ago, but no so long that the surviving remnant of humanity had forgotten what the aftermath had been like. The Kesh had built their entire morality around not returning to the state of mind that led to the Cities. Xellos had heard some of these stories before, from Swallow, but she had not seemed to feel their meaning as deeply as did Agate and the otherhomebodies. 

Even after Bounce had dropped reluctantly off to sleep, nobody seemed to want to talk about the end of the light-viewing expedition. Pond curled up in a corner with one of the lamps, a cushion, and a book he was reading. Agate lit another lamp and set it on the table, then grabbed the mending basket. Swallow collected everyone's belt knives and a couple of longer blades from the pantry and established herself at the other end of the table with a whetstone and some oil. Adsevin thumped down to the basement and came up with an untidy bundle that resolved itself into a long coil of dried grapevine, a double-handful of long, flat dried leaves of something like mallow or iris, and a half-finished basket that would be the ultimate destination for both. She pumped the sink basin half-full of water and set her weaving materials in to soften. Xellos, bowing to the inevitable, borrowed some of Swallow's oil and a rag from the mending basket and began oiling his boots. Once everyone seemed settled, he asked, cautiously, “What more can you all tell me about the White Clowns?” Taboos were taboos, and secrets were secrets, but he was curious.

Pond made a vague grunting noise. Agate gave him an assessing look. Swallow frowned slightly, thinking, perhaps, about what answer to give, but Adsevin beat her to it. “Not much,” she said, “The White Clown Society is under the Obsidian, like the Blood Clowns, only all men instead of women. And all secret, of course. You can't be a famous White Clown like you can be a famous Blood Clown.”

“Of course,” Xellos nodded. “I take it they focus most of their... performances on a young audience; is it so the children will stay at home when the wild predators are likelier to be hungrier than usual?” He wasn't sure that quite fit, here; not even all the oaks lost their leaves in the rainy season; it wasn't like the more northern climes where there was a genuine shortage of fodder in the winter.

“No,” Swallow said, looking dreamily into that middle distance where memories tended to gather. “There’s more to do before the Sun, not less, for children. There's the usual herding and the gathering and hunting eggs, maybe, and besides that, unless you've come inland you have your gift seedlings to tend, so you can give them to your parents and grandparents and favorite teachers and so on, come Sunreturn day. But you go alone as little as possible during the Twenty-One Days, if you're young, and when you're doing something like the seedlings where you kind of _have_ to be alone, everything feels very dangerous, even if you're going somewhere you've been a thousand times.”

“Ah.” Xellos nodded understanding. “Not a simple lesson in xenophobia, then, but in living with fear and in persevering through it. An important lesson, that one.”

Agate shot him a piercing look. “Don't mistake the millwheel for the stream,” she chided. “Nobody lives only in the Five Houses, and during the Sun least of all.”

“Well, no,” Xellos admitted. “Clearly that is not all the White Clowns do, or teach.”

“Or _are,_ ” Swallow insisted. “We say, 'clothes wearing the person makes a good clown.' Sometimes, like tonight, or like that time when I ran straight between the clown Wry Neck's legs once when I was nine and he fell down and turned into Dream Gander of the Obsidian, laughing and swearing, sometimes a white clown is a man dancing inside a mask and playing a joke on the children. But they are still there in the Puma's house, all those clown souls. Sometimes they come into the masks and the cloaks, and sometimes, then, things happen.”

Xellos could well imagine; the White Clowns probably watched and vetted their own very carefully, trying to make sure that none of the people dressing as the local nightmares really wanted a nightmare's freedom. And inevitably, they would still sometimes fail.

He kept an eye out for the Clowns after that, in between teaching the Bay Laurel Boys, and Swallow, and as he went about the town on one errand or another, or looked out the windows of Five Toads House. The bogeymen were easy quarry, really; if you were twelve or fifteen feet tall and your job was scaring small children, there were only so many places you could go. He counted five different clown rigs, there might be one or two more than that. None of them had the obvious sort of angry face: one of them raised a supercilious eyebrow in eternal amused contempt, another one looked tight-lipped and determined, one looked sullen and sulky. Wry Neck, spoken of as the awfullest ghoul of them all, who walked forward and faced backward, bore a very familiar expression of detached, scientific curiosity. Xellos thought the whole matter so odd that he asked Looks High about it: was the Valley such a happy place that the faces of the Clowns were the worst they could imagine? The old scholar shook his head. “You should really be talking to Toyon of the Obsidian, not me, but I've always thought they were more in the way of a warning. You see a clown face wearing someone, you do something about it before it's too late, like seeing a mole that might be cancer. They are the faces that go with people who have stopped listening, who are turning into things and treating other people likethings.” 

Well, that was tricky. Because, in reverse order, that was exactly what he needed his Pact-thrall to do. However, there had been other religions that espoused compassion as the highest virtue and still managed to become the excuses for some beautifully ruthless and all-encompassing systems of oppression and war. It was, usually, a matter of invoking and gradually expanding the purview of the Self-Defense Exception. He'd thought it might have worked better to get Swallow out of her support network and vulnerable, forced to depend on him. But maybe instead, she could be a thwarted idealist here; it would take longer, but he _did_ have at least another twenty or thirty years to establish the new order, (he forced himself past the horrible sinking feeling that came whenever he reminded himself how little time he had left) and it might work better.

Suppose she became a figurehead. Suppose she became a rallying point for the marginalized of the Valley, the “wet-naveled, shiftless, no-account people,” as Hazelnut had called them. The Bay Laurel Boys could be a start; they liked him, and the Valley condescended to their yearning desire for heroism, and he didn't think it would be too much trouble to get Swallow feeling sorry for them. And then, if he could awaken her sense of justice, make her angry and impatient enough to be ready to right wrongs on the behalf of her friends... that could work. He'd been trying to make Swallow more like himself. But perhaps he really needed her to be more like the Princess Amelia – and _there_ was a phrase he'd never imagined himself thinking about anyone. But he didn't need to accomplish any of this before the end of the Sun.

*****

“Uncle, would you come with me?” Xellos looked up from the pamphlet he was reading – an account of a “war” that had involved about forty-five people, counting both sides – into the pleading eyes of Bounce, who had put on boots (but not socks) and a grubby, motheaten sweater-vest that was too big for him. “The upstairs cousins don't want to stop making featherworlds,” he explained. This was some sort of handicraft using beads, oak galls, twigs, feathers, wires, and dyed wool. The older girls were quite absorbed in making, at the least, a mess on the table, as well as whatever the “featherworlds” were.

“Why not go with Pond?” Adsevin's husband was in the next room, making beads with the help of a little, hot-burning lamp; Xellos was not yet so much a part of the household that the others were inclined to leave him alone with the children.

Bounce looked shifty. “It's a secret,” he said.

Xellos smiled and put down the pamphlet. “I'm good at secrets.”

He followed the boy a short way into the Hunting Side, through a grove of trees and into a small clearing. Bounce kept looking around nervously. “You don't hear any stammering, do you?”

“No.”

“And... you're not a white clown yourself? Are you? Some new kind...”

So _that_ was what this was about! Bounce was afraid of the guisers, as he was meant to be. 

“I had never heard of the white clowns before I came to the Valley,” Xellos told the boy. 

“Oh. All right.” Bounce led Xellos to the middle of the clearing to a plot of nearly bare earth, pockmarked by a few hazel and alder seedlings. “Will you help me?”

“Help you how?”

“Digging and weeding,” Bounce said, scratching at the tiny green sprigs of weeds that emerged around the seedlings.

“I suppose...” Xellos hunkered beside the boy and then realized he did not have any digging tools of his own, stood up, ranged about looking for a good stick, then settled down again and scratched at the weeds with it. As he did, he considered the situation further, and when he stood back up he said, “This is something you're supposed to do alone, isn't it, Bounce?”

Bounce gabbled in panic. “It's not a _rule_ rule, not really, the seedlings are just supposed to be a surprise for the people I give them to. And anyway, you're a no-house person, so you don't count. _Please_ don't tell them,” he begged.

Xellos smiled amusement. It was such a tiny secret; as small as the seedlings, and with a similar appeal. “I won't tell,” he promised.

_“Phew!”_ Bounce announced carefully. Wiping his forehead dramatically was a new gesture for him, and his experiments with it were still studied. “What a relief!” He finished his clandestine gardening by opening the flap of his kilt and peeing on and around the seedlings (“Keeps the squirrels from eating them”) and started to skip back in toward the town. Xellos followed his newest ally, still smiling.

*****

The Solstice day was a very quiet one. Xellos wandered through the near-silent town, attending to the low, powerful thrum of emotion behind closed doors. All five heyimas were full of people achieving (or at least aspiring to) a state of entranced oneness or the heights of vision. Many of the people in the little crescent of houses were anxious and shaky with fasting today, or, in the children's cases, with excitement and terror. The White Clowns were out and about, but tomorrow was Sunreturn, and there would be dancing and sweets, and the children would present their decorated gift-seedlings to their families. Xellos had not yet decided what he would do for that day; his muddled empathic sense might or might not make it bearable. He was coming to the heyimas to meet Swallow, who had left in the leaden, cloudy dawn to attend to her planned “journey backward,” as she called it, meaning a communal drug trip under the auspices of Mouse Dance or some other one of the Serpentine scholars. “What I like the drugs for,” she'd explained, “is for when one part of my mind knows something but the rest isn't listening. Like, when they were holding the bringing-in for me after the Pig man raped me, I already knew it wasn't my fault, but the trance drugs helped all of me know it: my marrow, too.”

Xellos was seriously alarmed by the prospect. What would this do to his plans for her? But he had little choice in the matter; he would have to trust that any insight she gained into the current situation could serve his ends eventually. After all, those same drugs had been available in “the time outside the world,” in the Cities of Sann, and while many of those people were sure, afterward, that they had discovered the meaning of life, others got a good look at the abyss and stayed haunted the rest of their days. He could hope for a “bad trip,” as it had been called once upon a time.

His hope was not fulfilled. Swallow came down the steps of the Serpentine heyimas smiling peacefully and looking blank and contented. Well, fractals. It could have been worse; she could have been afire with love and delight.

“So you are here, Xellos.”

“So you are here, Swallow. You're looking well.” He offered a hand down the last few steps and she took it, then wrapped one arm around his waist. ( _Oh!_ said the body. They'd been abstaining from sex for the last nineday.)

“I feel well,” Swallow answered. “All cleaned out inside. Rather like that time down on the Haibob trail from the Easy River – remember that? We'd been arguing for days, but then you helped me with some old family pain, insisting the whole time you weren't a healer.”

Xellos did remember; it had been an extraordinary experience. He had not intended to 'help' her with anything, but Swallow had made a gift of her pain: not in the showy way of the masochists, who actually liked to hold on to their pain for themselves and just give away the appearance of it, but fully, keeping not even a seed of motivation behind. Xellos had been all but drunk with it, and Swallow... yes, Swallow had come out of it in an emotional state very similar to her current one. Xellos found himself briefly consumed by jealousy, wondering who'd had the bounty this time. Or had it just been wasted? He'd sensed no other mazoku, even minor ones, anywhere in the Valley.

“I'm hungry!” Swallow announced. “Is any of Pond's cornbread left, do you know?”

“You're not fasting?”

“Fasting on top of drugs would be too much. Only show-offs do that kind of thing, and it doesn't serve them well.”

Xellos nodded absently. Could he get Swallow to talk about whatever had just happened in the heyimas? Maybe it would give him a clue.

“So you are here,” Swallow greeted a small mass of people in early old age, who were digging a hole in the middle of the Common Place. “They're digging the Absence,” she explained to Xellos. “People will come by after dark and leave something of themselves behind – some hair, say, or some words written down, and then it gets filled in around midnight.”

Xellos grunted. He had had about enough anthropology for a while.

“So you are here, grandmother!” Swallow called, and Xellos looked around to see who she was calling by that name; none of her biological grandparents were still alive. Swallow patted the trunk of the tree called Deep-towering, that shaded the Oak Society workshop, and Xellos found himself absorbed into his own moment of insight.

Relationships were always tricky to judge, but as far as Xellos could tell from his empathic sense or any of the others, Swallow felt no differently toward her “house-sister” the sorrel patch or her grandmother oak tree or her 'aunt,' the boulder she sat on by Fefinum's pasture, than she did toward any of her human relatives; in fact, her interactions, if such they could be termed, with her botanical and geological “kinfolk” were less fraught than with her warm-blooded family. They did not seem to be metaphorical, nor religious. They were marked by the same casual, automatic care and concern she showed to almost anyone in town. 

This was a minor puzzle, he thought, until he wondered whether her relationships with the inhuman members of her chosen family might somehow intervene with his careful work of Taking the Girl Out of the Valley. Where had the intensity come from?

And then a whiff of carrion on the wind from Buzzard Hill awakened a memory, and he knew.

The Cities of Sann and the Cities of Loss had fallen entirely into mazoku control long before the official beginning of the Kouma wars. The rains had failed, the crops had failed; the very air had grown harder to breathe. A few elites here and there built citadels and enclaves, trying to keep the few things still worth having in their control. Gangs outside stormed the citadels, and fought each other, and destroyed the treasures and the places of learning as they went. Any corpse might be eaten as food, regardless of its species of origin. Skinny, sickly huddles of people hid in the ruins, hiding from the soldiers and the burning sun or the vicious monsoons, burning piles of garbage to keep warm; the smoke was toxic, but it wouldn't kill you as quickly as the cold at night, nor starvation. The fiercest and bravest of those people might fight their way into a citadel or an army, but most hid, and held each other for meager comfort, and died. They had not been important to Xellos, whose task at the time had been to keep the various enclaves engaged with each other, but if Kesh legend was correct, then some of those no-account people had planted acorns. Or sorrel. Or tomatoes. And protected them, somehow, from the hungry armies.

Someone had had to decide, over and over: the goat can have a share of the spirulina that has come in the tide this time. Some of this water must go to the squash. We will not eat all the dandelions in this patch. We will not eat all our beans, nor trade them all away, so there will be beans next year, and when they bloom, we will pollinate them by hand if the bees and the butterflies don't come back. Those little bits of inhuman life had to have been sacred. Nothing else would have kept them alive but the thing the Kesh did not have a word for. Xellos had once asked Swallow, trying to get a rise out of her, “Would you die for a chicken, as you expect a chicken to die for you?” Some – most? – of her ancestors would have answered, “yes.”

And the citadels and the armies had succeeded in killing each other, quickly enough that there were still a few places here and there that they had not completely used up. There had been places for the deer and the butterflies to come back from, it seemed. Or perhaps someone _had_ intervened. Not “Coyote,” as the Kesh would have it. Lord Beastmaster would never have done something like that. Not the dragons; it wasn't their kind of thing, either. Not Lord Cephied, who from the Kesh point of view had sacrificed himself to make the greatest, most hideous enclave of them all, full of backward-headed warriors. Not the Golden Mother. Surely, surely not the Golden Mother? Her decision to destroy Phibrizzo, to leave the world untouched... that had been some last wisp of the Inverse's will, not yet wholly subsumed in chaos. Hadn't it?

There was no one in a hundred miles who would even understand the question if he asked it. And no one anywhere who might be able to answer the question who wouldn't also kill him on sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the ghost stories are direct quotes from _Always Coming Home,_ most notably from the short story "Big Man and Little Man."
> 
> The incident on the Haibob trail Swallow is remembering is in "Arrariv (My word)" which is part... four? of the _Slayers West_ series? I'm too lazy to look it up, anyway.
> 
> For my regular readers: first of all, I appreciate all three of you very much and am happy to hear from you at any time. Also, my intrepid beta reader has been occupied with RL stuff lately but I'm hoping we'll get to a more regular posting schedule soon.


	10. Agate and Adsevin

That first month and a half after the Sun went busily. Xellos made himself useful in as many capacities and to as many people as would have him. He dug in gardens, demonstrated to several interested parties an alternative irrigation technique, (A variation on drip feed, employing wicks of cotton rather than open ditches to transfer the water,) rubbed flaxseed oil into whole prairies of wood paneling. Once he joined in hunting a marauding pack of wild pigs, though mostly people did not invite him to join food hunting trips even when he learned to mouth the ritual death words. He learned, painfully, that use of the sandstone nail file that lived by washroom sink was a matter of necessity, not vanity; long or ragged fingernails were capable of inflicting great discomfort, both on others and oneself. He was taught, though it might be too much to say “he learned” the names of some fifteen or so different species of weed that all produced tufty yellow flowers like tiny fireballs at the ends of variously configured stems. He wimped his way through a head cold: “You bean nod only do I only have siggsty years left to live, bud I'm goig to spend five or so of them lighe _this?”_ He attended lessons with the youngest children in the Blue Clay Heyimas, and the Obsidian and the Yellow Adobe, too, when he was invited. He continued to drill Stag and the other Bay Laurel boys in quarterstaff – focusing on the katas rather than sparring so as not to raise any danger flags among Kingsnake or the boys' parents, but finding times where he could sow little seeds of rebellion all the same. “Young men are valued much more highly in other places,” he told them truthfully and incompletely. “Bravery and ambition can be important virtues.” 

He declined, politely but firmly, to have anything to do with the bizarre ritual of collecting mammary secretions from nearly all the “Four-legged people” in the household except the cats and the himpi, and then consuming them at different, carefully supervised and adulterated, stages of decomposition. The custom had probably begun as a ceremonial assertion of mutuality, and was so ingrained in the culture now that the locals failed to see any religious significance at all, but Xellos found the product of these labors as indigestible as the process was outré, and he begged off. Once he gave up on dairy products, he found he enjoyed cooking; it had unexpected commonalities with spycraft. In both art forms, the outcome depended on many complex variables (in cooking they included the weather, the chemical composition of the pans, and whether one was cooking over a fire or with the electric stove, among others) that could only be perceived indirectly. He enjoyed cooking even more after he was able to get Red Flame the Smith to make him a proper _tou_ cleaver, which took several tries, since Kesh knives tended to be narrow-bladed and curved. The results of his labors were much praised by anyone Bounce's age, and abused by most of the adults as being overly bland. Xellos did better when he was cooking alone, but the household was a busy one, and trying to judge proportions for seasoning when one's senses were overwhelmed by the lemony aura of satisfaction that Agate emitted after a successful medical consultation, or Pond's rich, herby, and chronic ambivalence, was beyond his skill.

He accumulated nicknames. The first ones were simply relationship markers, tying him to Swallow in one way or another. The circumstance of an unmarried couple sharing a household was common enough that the Kesh had a word for it: _Haibi_ – “Now-dear,” and for Swallow's relatives, there were corresponding terms: “Son-for-now, Uncle-for-now.” As Xellos had predicted, a pair of _haibid_ who addressed each other as _giyakwunshe_ were seen as stupidly melodramatic or otherwise suspect, and most people seemed to expect that Swallow would eventually fall out of love and kick him out of the house. Well, that was accurate – as far as it went.

The forms of address that puzzled Xellos the most were the ones people started making up after he had begun insinuating himself into the fabric of daily life. Just about the point where someone within the Barrier would have dropped the “-san” and just called him “Xellos,” Valley people stopped calling him Xellos and called him something else instead. “Birch,” was one of the first, and “Aspen.” Because of his notable height and pallor, Lilac and Still Walking explained when he asked. There were another cluster of names concerned with his hair: “Blue Top” was obvious, if inaccurate, but there was no Kesh word for purple; only bluish red, and reddish blue. “Camas,” and “Iris,” had had to be explained to him, since the relevant flowers were not in bloom at the time. Ganais the head vinter called him “White Fox” once. He'd rather liked that one, but it didn't stick. He hoped “Clown Dog” would go the same way, preferably soon.

“They're trying to find ways to welcome you in,” Pond told him, when he grumbled. (Xellos knew perfectly well that most of Tachas Touchas did not actually feel particularly welcoming.) “Had you noticed? People here tend to let new names come to them when their lives have changed enough; you start looking for your second name when you put on undyed clothing as an adolescent, and many people take a last name when they are old. My baby-name was Morel,” Pond said, “Because my _mamou_ craved mushrooms when she was pregnant.” 

“Or you get given a lodge name for certain kinds of work,” Swallow added. “Doctors and clowns, especially, because they often seem like different people when they are doing that work than when they're just digging a field or something. My first name when I was born was Lamb, for my hair. And then I became Swallow when I joined the Finders. If you mean to make your new life here, you'll be expected to take a Valley name eventually. And as people get to know you, they'll stop calling you names based on what you look like and start describing how you act instead. You’d better start looking for your own name in the next year or so if you don't want to end up being Snake.”

Swallow herself still called him Xellos. Or Coyote's Son, or, resentfully, _giyakwunshe._ At his request, she did not call him _binyez,_ unless she wished to be irritating. The term was not intended to be insulting, being, more or less, equivalent to “dear,” but for Xellos it stung. The root word, _inye,_ meant “little and short-lived.” (Pebbles and other small things that lasted were _diftu._ ) The reminder made him flinch.

Agate, at long last, was starting to warm up to him a little. She and Adsevin had both treated his arrival with some degree of resignation: they expected nothing better from the wayward younger daughter, it seemed, and at least he wasn't ill-behaved, for a foreigner. As the weeks wore on, and he hadn't gone away, Agate began to pay more attention, and then, gradually, to probe. How long had they known each other, he and Swallow? Did she seem quite well, to him? Why call her _giyakwunshe?_ He didn't act besotted. When a burst of warm weather hit Tachas Touchas, a month or so after the Sun, Agate collared her 'son for now' and marched him up to the head of Shasash Creek 'to talk,' while everyone else in Five Toads House attended to a Planting Lodge ceremony and then headed out to the fields, to plow and dig and generally resume intimate relations with Adobe. 

It was a good day for a walk. The sky was still its deep winter blue, and the understory of the wood was still fairly bare and brown; the Na Valley was too dry for most of the low-growing evergreens like fern or bearberry. The riotous stickyvine, the nettles, and the other tall weeds had not yet made an appearance from underground. The way along Sashash Creek was fairly clear, and less muddy than many of the town paths, thanks to the forest litter. Many of the firs and pines had decorated themselves. The firs wore tender, bright green feathers at the tips of their branches, with the lower ones being much nibbled on. The pines had finished their own branches with little bright brown finials of incomparable stickiness.

“I know you've only met her half a year ago,” Agate informed Xellos as they made their way upstream, “But I wonder if maybe you know my daughter better than I do. Ever since that business with the Pig man – she did tell you about that, didn't she? Good. Or maybe even before, when her father was so ill and I didn't have the attention to spare... always, she slips away from me. If I'd only been able to give her more direction, or if Salt Wind had lived... well. Maybe you have some things to teach me about Swallow.”

Xellos tilted his head and said, “Maybe. I think she does still care about you all.”

“She does!” Agate agreed. “Only, whenever things go badly, she slips away. She doesn't let us take care of her... I think maybe – I heard you're actually older than she is? You don't look it.”

Xellos smiled. “I am. Quite a bit older.”

“Well.” Agate sighed. “Maybe she's looking for a father figure, then... she never felt quite safe again after watching Salt Wind die, I think, and then, after that...” she trailed off again. “I don't think that trip to Chulkumas was good for her. Why could she not have been brought in here at home? She keeps charging off into the world looking elsewhere for the things she lost here, never settling down... maybe that's why she's stuck with you this long; maybe she feels safe with you.” Agate tended to pair her most probing questions with a very neutral face and tone, just as Swallow did. Doctors’ lodge training, perhaps.

Xellos managed not to laugh. 

“If only she'd stayed with the Doctors...” Agate trailed off. “Well, but maybe you understand her better than I do, really.”

Xellos was beginning to think that perhaps he did. “Swallow and I have only been anything like a couple for about four months. Is that really a long time for her?”

“Maybe not,” Agate admitted, “It's hard to keep track of them when she's in Chulkumas and we're here... the rumors exaggerate, maybe. But I think maybe that's how she got past what the Pig-man did to her, by devaluing what he stole. So now she won't let sex mean anything... I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you,” she added belatedly.

“Sex is not what brought us together,” Xellos reassured her. He wondered what Agate would say if he suggested that she had her cause and effect reversed; that Swallow had recovered from her assault in part because she did not take sex very seriously.

“What is?” Agate was suspicious again. The question came out louder and sharper than her previous ones. 

Xellos thought it over. Swallow had helped him open the Carrion Gyre because she could see the spell was getting dangerous, though she might not have, if she could have guessed the consequences. She had shared the words of the Carrion Gyre in the first place to help the Chimera find his cure. She had met and befriended the Chimera, and the Inverse and the rest of them, because they needed help finding an Exchange and people to teach them how to use it. “Generosity,” he told Agate. 

Agate’s eyebrows came down in a flat line and she looked him right in the face. The word for “generosity” could also mean “wealth.” Was her daughter's foreign boyfriend admitting to being a gold-digger?

Xellos did not choose to enlighten her. “What bird is it that we keep hearing,” he asked her, “in among the digger pines? That one that chirps along like a piece of clockwork and then lets out a squawk every few minutes?”

Agate could not resist an invitation to lecture. “Ground squirrels, not birds. They have one that stands and keeps watch. It chirps when everything's fine, and when it shouts a warning, they all run back into their holes. Quail will do the same thing, only the Watching Quail, Ekwerkwe, stays quiet until something frightens her and then she says her name.”

“Ah,” said Xellos, “Fancy that.”

 

*****

_Well, at least I'm not bored._ Dull, stodgy Tachas Touchas flickered and spun with all the new things Swallow was learning with what Coyote's Son called her “astral sense” and Looks High and Mouse Dance called “dragonfly visions,” for their smallness and tendency to come and go. She found herself paying new attention to the longest-lived members of the house of Serpentine: the rocks and the trees. She was unspeakably grateful for the islands of continuity they provided in the flood of novelty. “Except most of it really isn't new,” she explained to Adsevin one morning. “Becoming a visionary is like being Bounce's age again. I want to run around sometimes, shouting, 'look, look! Poppy and Lilac don't like each other! The boulder Chidou is very old, and humans have been friends with it for a long time! Beans are alive until you cook them!' Only, of course, none of that is new; I just know it with a new part of myself.”

Somewhere down the steps and out in the Common Place, the resident mourning dove was awake too. “Do you too, too, too,” it asked, in Klatsaand. In Kesh it was, “Mama, a blue hound....” And in Dove it was something like, “go to sleep already; the sun's up and it's going to get hot.” Swallow went back to combing her hair.

Adsevin smiled gently and rubbed her growing belly. “You do seem happy, though,” she offered

“Indeed?” Swallow had not thought of herself as being happy. She worried, quite often, about what Xellos might be up to behind her back, or even in front of her nose. She felt sometimes as though all the things she was sensing and had no words for would come spilling up out of her like a volcano, until she was babbling away about rainbows like poor old Burning. She was trying to be patient with Agate, but sometimes it was like trying to be patient with a poison oak rash. Agate kept forgiving her for things. _But... I'm not bored._ She thought about Chulkumas from time to time, but mostly because she missed Hazelnut and her other friends, not, as in some other years, because she didn't think she could stand to stay in Tachas Touchas another minute. “Well,” she said to her sister, “Maybe.”

“And you're getting along better with Agate, too. I'm glad to see that.”

“Maybe.” Swallow said it more dubiously this time. “I have made a story about Agate that I tell myself when I need to. I tell myself that she keeps trying to give me the Doctor's Lodge because it is the thing she values most, and she doesn't think a lesser gift will do. Sometimes... sometimes that helps. Other times I wish she could see how much of that gift I have already taken. I _was_ studying with doctors this last year, you know. They were Klatsaand doctors, not Kesh doctors, is all.”

“Mm,” said Adsevin sympathetically. “It takes a very generous person indeed to truly let a gift go. Remember that time Great-Aunt Mohair gave us that tablecloth and then we cut it up and made skirts out of it?

Swallow chuckled, too, thinking, _and I remember yesterday, when I asked Xellos to teach me how to make things break apart from the inside, leaving the outside untouched, and he was all excited until I explained that I wanted to unclog the toilet._ But that led her to another thought. “Adsevin,” she asked suddenly, “Is Stone Telling still alive? That Blue Clay woman from Sinshan who gave you the song about the grass bowing?”

“So far as I know,” Adsevin said, startled, “Why?”

“Because Xellos is a warrior, and because she lived among the Dayao for a time, when she was young.”

Adsevin looked musingly out over the Common Place. The early light of the sun made everything seem to stand out, distinct and separate from its neighbors. It was easier to remember that the world was three-dimensional in the early morning. “So that's it,” she said.

“Yes. Maybe she'd rather not talk about those times. I won't bother her if she doesn't. But if she'd let me learn with her, even for an afternoon...”

Adsevin snorted. “I meant, so that's what draws you to your aspen tree, there. He's sick. And you always fall for the sick ones, sister-binyez. That's why _I_ think you belong in the Doctors' Lodge, even if you keep going out with the Finders, too.”

“What? I do not.” The protest was pure sisterly spinal reflex, after which Swallow wondered, _I do not what? Don't belong with the Doctors? Don't fall for sick people?_

Stammersong, who was sevai,” Adsevin said relentlessly. “Milkweed, the third son nobody wanted. Hempseed, who hasn't been completely sober for longer than five days in a row since he was thirteen, to hear Aunt Keepword tell it. Turtle, the widower. And I don't even know where to begin with Careful. You saw Mother caring for Salt Wind all through your clearwater years and now you think that caring means saying, 'let me fix it for you.' Unless it's Agate doing the fixing.” 

“Agate wants to keep fixing things when there's nothing to fix. Huh.” Swallow made a face. “I'm going to have to think about that one.” She pulled a mat of loosened hairs from her comb and dropped it over the side of the steps. “That isn't the story I made about the men I've been with,” she said. “The story I made is about... outsideness. The people who live easily in one place, they... there are questions they don't ask, and things they believe without thinking about them first. They travel on those smooth, wide roads where all the feet have gone before... And the kind of doctoring Agate knows is about bringing people in to walk on those same smooth roads. It's useful, and generous, and all that, but it's dangerous too, you know. It can shut out the hunting side of town, and the whole sky...” 

Well, there, you see?” Adsevin reached over and gave Swallow a sideways hug. “You can be a doctor and still find ways to piss off Agate. So you're not really losing anything.” 

Swallow's answering laugh was heavy and black, like a crow call. 

Adsevin heaved herself up and stretched her back. “If you go to Sinshan, _binyez,_ if you decide to talk with Stone Telling, make sure you talk with her chosen-sister, too. Stone Telling left the Valley and came back, and she married a Chumo man, a Doctor; she gave me the song because Alder asked her to. But when Stone Telling came she brought a chosen-sister with her who was born among the Dayao, and came here and stayed. And the sister married a Valley man who had joined the Warrior Lodge, before it stopped being. I think you'd be wise to ask Shadow about the things you want to know.” 

Swallow thought about what Adsevin had said off and on through the next several days, while she consulted with Bounce about the health of the himpi, while she and Fefinum plowed the fields that lived with the Five Toads households, while Xellos flirted with the Bay Laurel boys and then joined her in the washroom in the evenings, stroking warm water over her tired muscles with surprising tenderness. That she was willing to think about something Adsevin said was a bit of a change. Somewhere over the last few years, she had lost her adolescent need to believe that everyone in Tachas Touchas was wrong about almost everything. Her sister, especially: Adsevin had trained as a “silent doctor,” not a singer or a handler, and her work tended to involve careful observation and recognition of patterns, rather than giving out songs or medicine. Like a microscope, Adsevin might not know a thing about what was happening in the dewdrop next door, but what she did see she saw clearly. And she saw happiness for Swallow, in the way things were now. 

And maybe there was something to her theory about sickness, too. Swallow still wasn't sure it accounted for as much as Adsevin thought it did, and Adsevin was quick to see sickness where Swallow saw only difference. But with regards to Coyote's Son? What would it look like, exactly, if Xellos were to grow healthy? How did Swallow feel about that? Suppose one of the Rainbow People had come down to the Five Houses, as Xellos had, with their memories and understanding intact, with Swallow knowing that any time they argued, she was in the wrong. What would be left of her after half a year of that? _Well, I remember how it was with Careful, who was always trying to fix me and demanding I fix him in turn. And Careful was just a man._ It was knowing Xellos was wrongheaded that gave Swallow her freedom within their bond. Sometimes it seemed as if she had to fight for every inch of herself against his insidious pull into corruption, but the fact remained: he allowed – even expected – her to fight. Home, he had told her the first night they'd shared a bed, was not a place for rest, but for becoming. And here she was at home, becoming along like anything. She hoped – oh, she hoped, that Xellos was becoming, too, that someday there would be room in his souls for rest, and for the bonds that were not traps but coherence. All the same... _Adsevin's right about this much:_ she concluded, _I kind of need him to be crazy_. 


	11. Lodge Work

A few mornings after that, inside their room and listening to the rain, Swallow combed Xellos' hair. It had become a habit, one of several their bodies had established to suit themselves while their souls wrangled. His hair, like the rest of him, was smooth, cool, and heavy, and evaded attempts to keep it pinned in one place. It was also, (she hoped like the rest of him) growing. The front locks that used to sit in a fringe just above his eyebrows now came to the middle of his sharp nose, if they were combed forward. Swallow combed them backward and then tied one of the last ikat scarves -a blue and white one- around his head to hold them in place. The rest of his hair was long enough now to tie back in a queue, or might make a short braid, but he never wanted to do either; Xellos used his hair as a cat used its tail. It was as much an expressive tool as his limber spine. In fact, the ex-boyfriend he most reminded Swallow of was Clayface, the actor. Adsevin hadn't mentioned him in her list, either because she hadn't thought he was sick, or, more likely, because the affair hadn't lasted long enough for Adsevin to hear about it, but Clayface had shown a similar heightened awareness of where his body was, what it was saying, how it looked. And he had had a similar smug certainty that he could make other people feel things. Only, Clayface mostly used his body to show that he cared when he really didn't, where with Xellos it was usually the opposite. If Swallow had to be tied to Xellos, she was glad the bond made it possible for her to know what he really felt at any given time. It allowed for some measure of trust to grow. Not too much trust, though: knowing how he felt did not necessarily tell you what he was going to do.

“Are you up to stretching the tether again anytime soon?” she asked him. She was not entirely sure she wanted him nearby when she went to talk to Stone Telling or Shadow of Sinshan. But Sinshan was far enough away to strain the bond.

“We need to find some other thing to call it,” Xellos complained. “The channel between us does not behave like a tether in any way. It does not get stretchier with practice, and it does not snap under strain. It drains. From both of us, if we're too far apart.”

Swallow hadn't noticed this pattern, and felt a bit ashamed she hadn't. “And it fills up faster, doesn't it, when we're in accord? Or maybe it's more like veins, and there are actually many channels – only the other ones can be closed off, but when they're open the main one doesn't have to work as hard.” She thought a while longer. “So those times when you make yourself unhappier, because you want me to have power... you're curtailing our freedom when you do that.”

Xellos' answering amusement seemed to be genuine, if bitter. “Power often works that way, you know.”

It could be the start of another argument, Swallow supposed, if she was up for it. She took a breath. A furious pounding on the outside door interrupted whatever she'd been about to say. Swallow sat up straight and dropped the comb. The outer door burst open. “Asevin! Agate! Somebody!”

“That's Poppy's voice,” Xellos observed. He knew Poppy of the Obsidian slightly because she hung around with Stag; Swallow knew her because she was friends with her cousin Cat Watching – both girls had been initiated into the Blood Lodge at about the same time.

Swallow opened the door of their room and stepped into the hall without bothering to put her shirt on. She was already in her trousers, so that saved a little time. She sent her voice down the hall ahead of her. “Is it the lambing?” The lambing was a yearly emergency; even the services of a half-trained, half-assed, semi-doctor like herself were welcome. Agate had been out among the barns since two hours after midnight, and Swallow wasn't sure where Adsevin was at the moment, but she had to be either attending the lambing or keeping the lodge. Bounce had been with Agate last night and was still asleep. Pond had run upstairs to borrow a jar of dried brine shrimp.

“Yes!” Poppy called back as Swallow came into the kitchen. “Oh! Swallow, it’s you!” she added as Swallow joined her in the room. “Even better! It's Mibi, see – she's gone and hidden herself halfway up Bone Mountain like she does, but it's a breech and I can't get my hand in far enough to do any good.”

“Right.” Swallow pulled her toolbelt from its basket by the door and slid her feet into a pair of sandals. She hesitated a moment before grabbing her coat – once she got to Mibi's childbed, she'd need her arms free and afterward she'd be too messy to put it on. But she might as well stay warm for the walk up Bone Mountain.

“I've got soap and water,” Poppy volunteered, holding up a large jug. 

“Good,” said Swallow. “How about acorn oil, or lanolin?” She dug among the clutter in the tool chest and found a good length of rope, about half as thick as her finger, but strong. She looped it over her arm.

“It's all in the barns,” Poppy answered, sounding harried. In use, she meant, among the other laboring ewes who had had the common sense to come in out of the cold after shearing. Agate, or possibly Adsevin, had made off with the supply at Five Toads House.

“Well, then,” Swallow grabbed the little jug of olive oil on the pantry shelf, “We'll have to use the good stuff.” She followed Poppy out into the gray dawn.

“I found her,” Poppy explained as they went along, and Swallow shooed a couple of curious dogs away, “over by Sitting Bear Wallow – hiding behind that little scrub oak patch, you know. And I put a blanket over her, to help her stay warm.”

“Good,” said Swallow. Tachas Touchas sheep got their first shearing early in the year, in part so that the ewes would be less inclined to hang out in the fields when there was a nice warm barn to lie in, and have their lambs in shelter. Mibi, it seemed, had declined the opportunity.

By the time they came to Sitting Bear Wallow, the rain had eased into falling mist, and the light had grown bright enough that the yellow stripes on Mibi's blanket shone. Mibi, however, was not under it.

Poppy swore. “City of Man! That stubborn, stupid old...”

“She can't have gone far,” Swallow soothed. She closed her eyes a moment, trying to get something coherent out of her new senses. _Someone alive, of a pretty good size... in a bad mood._ There were too many other people, too near, to be sure, but Swallow thought she might have a lead. “I'll look this way,” she announced, and Poppy nodded and began to gyre in the opposite direction, looking too.

Swallow's senses had not played her wrong: she found the missing ewe in another stand of scrub oak, actually shoved partway in among the stems, as if determined to hide herself. “I see you like your privacy,” Swallow told her, using one of the spells Xellos taught her to break scrub oak branches and give herself a way to reach the poor woman. She stood up and whistled. Poppy spotted her and ran up, still carrying the waterjug.

Swallow shimmied out of her coat and began covering both her arms and the rope with soapsuds and olive oil. It was too bad she didn't have some way to soothe the ewe as well, but they'd just have to muscle through this, all three of them. The lamb's tail was partway out of the birth canal – this was a tough breech.

“Be easy, you witless old cunt,” Swallow murmured, kneeling down next to Mibi, to begin reaching up into the canal herself. She didn't know what it was about medical work that always made her foulmouthed; maybe it was the degree of intimacy. Whatever it was, it was one of the reasons Swallow mostly worked with four-legged people. Hazelnut used to tease her: “A new kind of medicine,” she'd said. “From here on out, we'll have Singing Doctors, Silent Doctors, Handling Doctors, and Swearing Doctors.”

Each contraction squeezed Swallow's hand as if a cart were running over it. She and Mibi both winced. Swallow pushed firmly on the little wooly rump that was blocking the way, trying both to get it up further in, where there was more room – sort of- to move, and at the same time to follow the line of the leg until she could get the rope between the cleats of the lamb's hoof. Mibi bore down again and Swallow swore under her breath, pushing on the rump. Carefully, a few inches at a time between contractions, she slid her hand up the lamb's leg. It twitched faintly – the baby was still alive, which was a relief, but a brief one. Once she got the rope set between the tiny cleats of the hoof, Swallow let the next contraction push her hand back out until she'd reached the rump again. Now she could hold the lamb's bottom in place with one hand and pull the leg out by the rope with the other, then go through the whole thing again with the other hind leg. After which the lamb could come out into the Five Houses the way it was meant to. But not for long. “Poppy,” Swallow called, “does your flock have any orphans?”

Poppy's face swam into view, slightly upside down as she contemplated Swallow. “Why, is this lamb dead?”

“Not yet,” Swallow answered, then clenched her teeth as the spasming uterus tried to break her hand again. “And I hope I'm wrong, but I think I feel the tremors already. If you have anyone likely, you maybe should get them, just in case.” It wasn't her hands, but her other sense that was telling Swallow what had happened to this lamb. But Poppy didn't need to know that. And Swallow could be wrong.

“Shit.” Poppy's face was grim, but the girl was thinking, at least. “I hadn't heard that we have any, but I'll go ask at the barns. Eats Nettles sometimes will refuse to nurse, I know...”

“Go, then,” Swallow directed, “We'll do all right here for a bit. That's right, Mibi,” she added, “You're a good, strong woman, to keep – ergh! Fourth-son-of a -to keep squeezing that hard after all this time. It'll be over soon, I promise.” She'd gotten one hind leg stretched out the way it was supposed to be, and she was almost at the knee for the other one. Poppy was a cool waft of worry sliding away in the distance.

It took only a few more minutes for the lamb to finish being born, and for it to be obvious that Swallow had not been wrong. The lamb shook with its own personal earthquake: the limbs were not merely wobbly, but spastic, and its juddering tongue stuck out between trembling jaws. Sevai. It was too far gone to be able even to suckle. Swallow reached for the hilt of her knife and then paused. She had an even faster tool at her disposal now. She took the lamb in her arms and recited the death words in a long rush: “Your-life-ends-now-your-death-begins. Beautiful-one-please-give-me your-death-I-give-you-my-words.” Then she opened a small hole between something and nothing, inside the lamb's head. The spell worked fine on clogged toilets, but even faster on brains. The lamb died so quickly the limbs didn't even jerk. Swallow had it halfway skinned by the time Mibi delivered the fterbirth.

She was just moving the little corpse out of the way when she heard footsteps and a live lamb bleating hungrily. Swallow looked up to see, not Poppy, but her brother Mica, with a half-day-old lamb draped over his shoulders. He'd done his hair oddly – brushed back and unbraided, with a scarf tied around the top of his head just above his eyebrows. It took Swallow a moment to realize where she'd seen that hairstyle before; she sighed internally when she did. Aloud, all she said was, “Good. Let's hope this works.” Mica held the orphan lamb still while Swallow tied the front legs of the fresh skin around its neck and the back legs around its belly. She wiped her hands on the afterbirth and then on the lamb's head, just to make certain the little changeling would smell like its adoptive mother. Then they set the orphan in its gory coat next to Mibi.

She sniffed at it, then offered it a cautious lick. The lamb, hungry and impatient, butted her udder. Mibi tried to turn herself around a little to keep cleaning up her baby, but the protecting thicket of scrub oak impeded her. The lamb found a teat and began to suckle, uninterested in hygiene. Mica laughed, watching, and Swallow chuckled too, then eyed the jug of wash-water. She doubted there was enough left to do any good. “I'll take the death up to buzzard hill,” she offered.

“Sure,” Mica said, still laughing. “I'll see if this stubborn old woman is ready to go be warm in a barn.”

Swallow nodded. She picked up the afterbirth off the ground and brought it to where the other lamb's corpse lay. She cut a slit in the belly muscles of the little thing so she could tuck the afterbirth up inside with its other organs for carrying. She lashed the skinned corpse's legs together into an improvised shoulder strap, and tucked the whole thing upside-down under one of her arms. She headed up the hill a little to the place where the town met Coyote's house, where the town put flesh they would not eat. There was a shepherd song from Chumo that went, “You can have the afterbirth, not the lamb, Coyote.” Well, this time Coyote could have the whole thing. No one in town except one of the unwise dogs would eat someone who had been born sevai.

Xellos met her at the back door of Five Toads house, smiling and still shirtless, even at this hour of the morning. What on earth had he been been doing with himself? As Swallow walked in, he stepped forward, placed both hands on her shoulders, and kissed her decorously on the forehead. “Covered in blood is a good look for you,” he said, “You should wear it more ft.

“The lamb was sevai,” Swallow said shortly, explaining the blood, or at least some of it, and her lack of interested in his kinks at the moment, and whatever else needed explaining right then. “We were able to do the skin trick with an orphan, though, so Mibi will be all right.”

“Ah?” Xellos looked at her through lowered eyelashes, then abruptly straightened and took his hands off her shoulders. “Ah,” he said. “You had better wash, then. And so had I. Although I did try to choose a clean place to kiss.” He stepped back at last, allowing Swallow to reach the basement stairs and following behind.

It took Swallow a moment to follow his train of thought. “Sevai is a mutation,” she told him. “Not blood-borne. So you're not in any particular danger.”

“Are you sure about that? Some pathogens have a very long incubation period.”

“If it were blood-borne, I wouldn't expect to see fraternal twins where one is sevai and the other is not, nor sevai babies born from healthy mothers.”

“Hm. But you still don't eat that meat, I notice.”

“Well, no.” Xellos gave Swallow rather more help than she needed with cleaning up: stroking her arms and chest, lifting her breasts one by one to rinse under them – it seemed he still had sex in mind. “You like blood that much?” Swallow wasn't entirely certain she had wanted to know that. “What a perverted old fourthson you are, after all.” Xellos' smile grew broader. “Well,” he said, “that's part of it, maybe, but I find it much more exciting that you used your power to kill.” Swallow looked at him. “A lamb with advanced sevai.” “One has to start somewhere.” _I kind of need him to be crazy,_ Swallow reminded herself as she turned away back to the sink, _And the magic is a tool. Remember what they say about machines and horses. His reasons don’t have to be mine._ She took a few deep breaths and washed her hands again, scrubbing with the brush to make sure the last of the dead lamb’s maybe-poisoned blood got out from under her fingernails. She dropped the brush in the boil pot to be sterilized. Her _haibi’s pale,_ cool hands laved down her shoulders again, slippery with the balm he was rubbing into the skin of her reddened hands. When he pulled her up against his bare chest again and the hands dropped to her belly, started to pluck at the drawstrings of her trousers, Swallow sighed and let herself relax. He could, if he wished, celebrate the fact that the lamb was dead. She would still enjoy being alive, and he would not take that from her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything I know about large animal obstetrics I learned from James Herriot.


	12. Outbound

To Swallow's relief, when they finally managed to head up to Sinshan for a day, Xellos showed no objection to being shoved off to the Madrone Lodge Library while she pursued her informants: “Pandora the traveler stayed in Sinshan,” he noted, “and I find myself wishing to re-read her account with a different emphasis than I did last time.” So he vanished into the Lodge, leaving Swallow to find Stone Telling and her chosen-sister.

Stone Telling had had a Dayao father, and now, in age, it showed: she and Shadow could have been blood sisters rather than chosen-sisters. Both women had high, Dayao cheekbones and willowy builds and long gray hair that waved only a little bit. Shadow had a gentle, breathy voice and a tendency to laugh nervously at almost everything. “Goodness, child!” she said when Swallow explained why she was there, “That's very flattering, but I don't know if I can tell you anything useful. I never really thought about my life very much, you know; I just did it. Do you know the story of the centipede that couldn't walk after someone asked it how?”

Stone Telling was dryer and sterner. She cast a sharp look at her chosen-sister and another at Swallow. “That kind of false modesty is one way of going about it,” she said. “For warriors, everything is victory and defeat. Dayao women are taught to surrender from the beginning: to take orders and smile and offer praise and never use their own minds, their own wills.”

“What harm does it do to let a man have a victory if he wants one?” Shadow objected. “In the City we used to say, 'pick your battles.' If all a man wants is to feel proud for a while, it's easy enough to let him. Save your anger for something important.”

As though to illustrate what she meant, Shadow's husband Spear blew past them. “Fern was heading up to the vineyards with a barrowful of sheep manure!” he announced, “Sheep Manure! As though Ganais grapes were prize squash! Don't do that, I told her, unless you want grapes the size of your thumb that taste of nothing but water. I don't know where young people get these notions from.”

“I'm glad you were able to set her right, _binyez,”_ Shadow said mildly.

“I'll take care of that wasp nest for you this evening,” Spear promised.

“Thank you very much, _binyez._ You know wasps frighten me.” And then Spear was on his way again.

“You see?” Shadow chuckled indulgently. “And this evening he'll have a victory over the wasps, and want praise for it. They're like children, really, always needing reassuring.”

Swallow bit her lip. She liked Shadow and Stone Telling; she'd been enjoying their company, but... “Xellos doesn't strut. He doesn't crow or bellow. He pokes and prods and smirks. He repeats rumors and agrees with people when they are unhappy.”

“Put his shoes on the landing,” Stone Telling advised bluntly. “He doesn't sound like he's worth the trouble.”

“What kind of warrior was he, exactly?” Shadow wanted to know. 

“A spy.”

“He sounds like one of the Condor's wives. Put his shoes on the landing. A high-ranking slave is a lot harder to handle than a warrior.”

Swallow could not disagree. But she made no attempt to explain to the sisters why she would not be following Stone Telling's advice. As Shadow said, pick your battles. “Well then,” she said, “maybe you can tell me about slaves.”

“What do you know already, Finder girl?”

“They like to keep secrets...”

 

****

 

Xellos had guessed that Swallow went to Sinshan seeking advice about how to handle him, and the guess had been confirmed when, in the Madrone Lodge library, he found a copy of Stone Telling's story about her life among the Dayao. Pandora the traveler had, according to the archivist, bought a printed copy from Stone Telling's daughter, Shining (Not the Shining who was friends with Swallow in Chulkumas, he reminded himself.) Once he figured that out, however, he was not surprised that Swallow emerged from her day of chatting with the sisters full of amusing anecdotes about Shadow and her blustering husband, but saying nothing about why she had wanted to meet them in the first place, and emitting a quiet, refreshing aura of disappointment and worry. 

Stone Telling had been powerless among the Dayao and had maintained the usual Kesh aversion to direct confrontation and to coercion. Swallow's background as a doctor-turned-trader already gave her plenty of experience with the “slaves’ tools” of negotiation, subtle jockeying, and emotional manipulation, to say nothing of simply leaving town when matters got too tense. None of these, however, would do her much good against Xellos, who had been engaging in similar practices “since before the rocks were born,” as one Valley expression had it. (It was quite literally true, in Xellos' case; at least some of the rocks around here had originated in a volcanic eruption no more than five hundred years ago.) The only thing that would allow her to halt his agenda was using her powers. And if she used them strictly enough to keep him in check, she would have time and attention for little but their use; she would become what he intended her to become. I can't lose.

In the meantime, there were all the daily human things: both the enormous number of things that were necessary to obtain food and maintain shelter and possibly keep the microorganisms at bay, and the nearly infinite number of things that humans invented to fill up the rest of their time and keep them from doing anything too important. In the Valley of the Na, the most prevalent hobby was, of course, Being Kesh – learning the rules for impromptu poetry or stories about Coyote, painting spirals on clay pots, learning which tasks were done by machines and which by people, then doing them that way... all of that. The next big communal Keshing was scheduled for the Equinox: three days of ceremonies and festivity known collectively as the World wakwa. Preparations around Five Toads House seemed to be fairly low-key, compared to the Sun. No one close to the family had died in the last year, so the Mourning Night did not loom; Bounce's preparations for the Ant Dance on the Third Day took place primarily in the Heyimas, although he was terribly excited and scurried around whispering to himself as he practiced. But there were no marathon chanting sessions in the offing.

Mohair invited Agate's household upstairs for supper one night, in celebration of one of her granddaughters having been selected as the next Oak Gyre singer for the Serpentine, whatever that meant. They made quite a crowd, all together – Mohair and her daughters, both of whom were about ten years older than Agate, and her granddaughters and the visiting grandsons and assorted spouses and offspring. There were two tables set up in the greatroom, and one on the balcony at the end of it, open to the spring wind. Xellos wasn't entirely sure he had everyone's names and geneologies straight; he knew Jayfeather and Cat Watching because they babysat Bounce from time to time, and Mohair, and he thought the balding man in the red shirt was called Quill, and was Jayfeather's father, but the others were still a bit of a swarm. One of the women of the parental generation spared an extra hug for Swallow. “I'm glad to see you're still here,” she said – praise and admonishment in one breath. Swallow shrugged.

The adolescents drifted out onto the balcony, with Bounce tagging along. People chatted and nibbled at acorn flour fritters flavored with olives, mostly about the upcoming World Dance. Such a pity about old Pearwood dying so close to the Mourning Night; her family ought to be allowed to sing the Going Westward songs for more than a moon before burning her name... If they had donkey-races on the Second Day, would Swallow ride Fefinum?

She laughed. “A mule racing donkeys? Hardly fair... Besides, I was thinking Xellos and I might head back up to Chulkumas before that,” Swallow told them. “I think Hazelnut and Kemel might be getting married this year. I'd like to sing the wedding carol for them.” 

“And what about you two?” 

Swallow stopped laughing and looked at her mother. “Xellos and I will not be dancing, if that's what you're asking.”

“He should come further into the valley before there's any talk of their getting married,” the man who was probably Quill agreed.

“Maybe so,” said Agate. “It's risky, but then, Swallow takes risks. I would be glad to see her choose one that helps her grow, instead of to run away.” But there was something funny about the emotional currents under her speech. Perhaps she was trying, grudgingly and biting her tongue, to accept her uncomfortable daughter on her own terms, or perhaps she was trying for reverse psychology: see, my daughter, you might imagine you're in love, but you know the truth when you think about it....

“There has not been a great deal of choosing so far,” Swallow said, inaccurately, to Xellos' way of thinking, “and that is why I don't want to get married this year. We have a lot of deciding to do, both of us.”

“Is that what you say, too, Xellos?” 

He shrugged. “I don't mind, either way. Your rituals don't mean a great deal to me; Swallow and I are bound, regardless.”

“I don't think I understand that,” said Agate, “Even now.”

Swallow rubbed her forehead. “I don't have any new words for you, Agate. Xellos and I took hands in the Ninth House, for reasons that seemed right at the time. I think maybe we both wish it undone, now. But there is no time, there. It is still happening there, in the Hawk's house. It will not unhappen here, whether it was well done or not.”

“So you have said,” Agate responded neutrally.

Mohair broke in, confusedly. “I thought Swallow was married to that Klatsaand girl.”

Xellos let his eyebrows raise until they nearly disappeared under his bandanna. “Oh? I had not heard about this.”

Swallow, however, responded with neither indignation nor embarrassment. “That was a Finders' Lie we all agreed to, my grandmother's sister- I thought I explained it in the letter. I was learning with Tairoot's father, Utnand, the doctor there, and staying in their household. The Klatsaand people are very cautious about sharing their households, but they have a thing they call “half-marriage,” something like our _haibid_ but with more rules to it. Being Half-married to Tairoot put me under the kinds of obligations to the household that made sense for me, and gave the other Klatsaanders a way to understand it. And Tairoot didn't mind.”

“Ah,” said Xellos. “Not a... romantic liaison, then. You didn't... what's the Valley euphemism? Come inland?'

“Not very often,” Swallow said with a leer that made Mohair snort. “And I was very careful not to get her pregnant.”

Some of her audience laughed, as Swallow had clearly intended, and the conversation began to split and meander. Jayfeather drifted back in from the balcony, where a dice game had begun, and attached herself to a group of adults who were talking shop. Swallow, excluded from the medical conversation for reasons Xellos did not quite understand, did a bit more clowning among those who were in a joking mood: something about how doing visionary work was like being a baby again, and about early plowing, and how sensible Fefinum was and how much trouble that could be. Someone asked her to bring out the little Klatsaand astrology book again.

Swallow refused. “In some places and times, that kind of joke becomes a reason to refuse a gift, and Utnand was generous.”

Even with a diminished empathic sense, Xellos could feel the crunch of the indignation the rest of the family bit down on when she said this. The reaction seemed excessive to him at first, and then he realized that she was not merely pointing out an embarrassing discourtesy, but stepping out of her designated role by doing so. The black sheep of the family got freedom and a certain degree of forgiveness for transgressions no one else would dare to embark upon. She should not also expect to claim the moral high ground.

“Is Klatsaand generosity so much better than the kind you can get here at home?” asked an aunt. “From those crazies?”

“Better and worse are eggsucking words,” Swallow quoted. “Do you think Klatsaand has nothing worth giving because they tell stories about Kemel and Gebayu and the Moon, instead of Bear and Coyote and Puma?”

Swallow's astral palate was not yet very refined, Xellos knew, but he imagined even she could taste the unspoken yesses that answered this question. Tachas Touchas was xenophobic, and would only become more so now that the exchanges were destroyed and one could no longer speak easily with the peoples on the other side of the Inland Sea. Swallow might move to Chulkumas or Wakwaha, looking for a more cosmopolitan attitude, but the islands of suspicion would grow... His sacrifice would win the war in this part of the world for the mazoku in the long run. And in the short run, Swallow's family was going to be very, very useful for steering her in the direction he wanted.

“No need to get upset, my daughter,” said Agate, soothingly.

“You say I'm upset every time I say something you don't agree with. Aunt Eucalyptus just complained because I would not mock a teacher. Or maybe because I chose the Finders. Or because I would not unchoose the Doctors when I left. Other Finders take their old trades with them, why wouldn't I? I'll likely always be a better Finder than a doctor, but that doesn't make me useless.”

“The Finders aren't useless,” Agate said in a tone of exaggerated patience. “Cannabis isn't useless either, but that doesn't stop some people from using it wrongly. And you've been using the Finders to run away from your problems since the Pig man.”

Swallow all but spat. “Oh, the Pig man, the Pig man!” She tapped her fingers together, making a yammering mouth of them. “I think you were grateful to the Pig man. I was hurt and you could take care of me and show me how much you loved me, and I'd be grateful, and I'd understand that the world outside the valley was full of bad things and stay on the Planting side... Oh, I don't mean you wanted me to suffer, and I don't mean I'm not grateful for what you did for me then, but... must I take gifts only from you? Must I model myself on you for everything, like Little Man trying to be Big Man?”

“You see?” Agate cried to the assembled aunts and uncles, “You see how wildly she's talking? Even you see it, don't you Coyote's Son?” She looked at Xellos. “She needs help.”

Xellos stopped smiling and regarded his “Mother-for-now” with half-open eyes. “It may be too late for me to accomplish anything by saying this,” he began gently, “but I would advise you to stop making up a world where somebody took away the daughter you wanted and left a damaged one behind, and instead to find a way to take the gift you have been given. A Swallow nests under your roof from time to time. She brings word from the far off places and knows the world of which the Valley is a part, and sees it all with new eyes, and breaks old circles. Gaps you cannot cross she barely even sees; and so she helps to hold the world together.” 

Swallow's rising gratitude and affection were surprisingly easy to take, like ginger in the sweet custard of Agate's shock and anger. “Because if you can't learn to take the gifts you didn't ask for,” Xellos went on, still quietly, but letting his growing smile carry a hint of a threat, “You'll eventually lose Adsevin, too.”

Agate glared at him, red-faced with fury. Adsevin and Aunt Eucalyptus were both a little frightened. Pond seemed to be hiding a sharp glee equal to Swallow's. “You're not my son-in-law yet,” Agate hissed. “And you don't have the right to be rude to me. You will not sleep under my roof tonight.”

“Was I rude?” Xellos batted his lashes, whipping Agate into greater fury, “To tell you that your daughter is an uncommon gift? Well, if you will have it so, I will not trespass on you further.” 

Swallow was already heading for the door that led to the stairwell. “I have some other people to talk to in town before we head back up the river to Chulkumas,” she said, “Maybe a day or two. Would you rather stay in the heyimas tonight, or in one of the summerhouses?” 

She was picking a side, Xellos noted, and her audience would imagine the choice to be freer than it was, but she was also passing on a subtle message to the rest of the family that she could be reached in places out of Agate's control. He approved of the subtlety. The task of isolating her away from those other ties could wait a while longer. Swallow was doing some of it herself, now, in heading back to Chulkumas. Agate would make it easier, driving the daughter she thought to save into a tighter bondage with the one person who would accept her as she was now. 

Xellos thought, not for the first time, that it had been a tactical error to allow Swallow to lead them both back to the Valley- she would have been much more malleable had they stayed away from her support network. If he'd played on her fear of inadvertently doing harm... oh, well. He'd not been in the best of conditions himself at the time, and besides, it was equally likely that some of the Finders would have come and gotten her. Much better to let her think she had cut the ties herself. “I think I would prefer the summerhouse, if it's not going to get too cold tonight,” he said. The summerhouses were crude, three-walled structures, barely better than camping. But, nearly half the Serpentine population of Tachas Touchas was here in the room. He doubted the political currents in the heyimas would be restful. Entertaining, but not restful.

“All right then.” Swallow turned to look at her mother again, her face determined. For a moment the older woman and the younger one looked very much alike. “I have not stopped loving you, Mother.” She used the word unne, implying family feeling, but, unlike iyakwun, the bond of unne could be dissolved. “I will always be glad to see you, should you come to Chulkumas.” She and Xellos spent a few more minutes saying their goodbyes to the rest of the household and headed down the stairs. Swallow grabbed another handful of fritters as she went past, and rummaged on the pantry shelf when they got back into Agate's part of the house. In less than an hour they had assembled their bundles and scarfed down a few leftovers, and were headed out the door and toward the edge of town. They would be back at Five Toads next morning, no doubt, doing a more thorough round-up of possessions, but style did count for something.

As they passed the Obsidian cemetery orchard, Swallow took a deep breath and rubbed a hand across her eyes. Her smile in Xellos' direction was wobbly. “I was surprised to hear you defending me in my mothers' house. If I didn't know better, I would think it was because you were fond of me, and not just because you like to pick fights.”

“Oh, but I am fond of you!” Xellos protested, smiling, “Even before our fates became so entwined. I've always tried to choose people I like to work with, because of course the work is never done, and one might as well enjoy oneself. You,” he said, pointing a finger at her collarbone “have a piece of Coyote in your soul. It scares you sometimes, I think, but I look forward to seeing what will happen when you stop being afraid and let it free. And of course,” he added, “there is a special joy in irritating people as hidebound and stubborn as Agate.” He let his tone grow more intimate. “Besides. I don't want you fighting anyone for control of your soul but me.”

Swallow laughed and threw a squashy, fallen apple at him. “Grow your own souls, you lazy snake, and leave mine be!”

They chased each other a few hundred yards up through the wet pastures in the northeast of town, and then slowed down again, panting. Xellos returned to the topic at hand. And to his self-appointed task. “No, but really,” he said, “If Agate deserves her fame as a doctor, we can't let her stagnate like that. She needs a lesson. Suppose you cursed her to speechlessness for a time? I could show you how; it's not difficult.”

“Oh...” Swallow's sigh was almost a growl. “The times I've wished I could do just that!” They walked on in silence for a while, and then she surprised Xellos again by asking, “What about cursing her so that she can only talk if she listens first? To reward good behavior?”

Bargaining already? There was always a certain disappointment mingling with the satisfaction when a mark took the bait too soon. _No, no, let's keep playing. Don't make it too easy, Swallow!_ Xellos shook his head and made his voice regretful. “Alas, that sort of moral subtlety is a human specialty, and these are not human powers you are using.”

“Ah.” Swallow fell silent again, feeling many things in succession, but with the dominant note being a bland resentment, directed, Xellos guessed, at herself and her family, for replaying the same drama too many times. “Maybe someday I will ask you about that. After I have talked about it with some other people who know us both. And in the meantime, I will keep the thought in Puma's house.”

The house of fog and dreams, Puma's house was. Xellos smiled more broadly. _One step at a time, Swallow. I'll make a proper thrall of you yet!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd, we have just about the only appearance of canon _ACH_ characters in this whole damn thing, with the sisters from Sinshan. Since "Pandora" is, more or less, the authorial voice, who interviews various Valley personages and worries about the nature of literary utopias, Xellos is breaking the fourth wall a bit by reading her notes in the library.


	13. Making Do in Chulkumas

To Xellos' mild surprise, since he'd been too hungover to attend properly when Swallow first explained it to him all those weeks ago, their home in Chulkumas was not at Was a Mill House, with Aunt Keepword, Hazelnut, Buckbrush and Kemel, but in a different “arm” of the town, in a house called Red Beams. An elderly “uncle” of Swallow's had two rooms he was willing to share– or possibly it was one room and the larger family that lived in most of Red Beams donated the second one. Garlic's degree of blood kinship with Swallow was so faint as to be spurious, but he was Serpentine, which was enough. Besides, the gift was less than wholly generous. It became clear within seconds of their arrival that Garlic was no longer up to much in the way of housekeeping, and his bachelor existence had progressed to the “someone ought to do something,” stage. It seemed Swallow and Xellos were to be the someones.

“Be welcome,” Garlic wheezed at them, smiling broadly, “make yourselves comfortable.” He looked around vaguely at the cluttered room, the rumpled, gray-toned bedding kicked into a corner, the scattered jars and baskets, and piles of things. “Go ahead any use anything you want. Except leave my workbench alone.” This was the sole table in the room – cluttered, like the rest of it, but in a more organized fashion. Jars and boxes arrayed in rows, flat baskets stacked so as to aerate the herbs drying in them, a clean place in the middle for a mortar and pestle, a cutting board, knives and whisks and tiny spoons. “I haven't gotten around to doing much cleaning lately,” Garlic admitted. “It'll be good to have some energetic young people about. Whatever you have time to do.”

They made time for a great deal the first quarter-moon or so, starting with the little cubby off the workshop, barely seven feet square, that was to be Swallow's and Xellos' sleeping room. Or at least it would be until the weather grew warm enough to sleep on the front porch, which was considerably larger. This space was not cluttered, having been emptied for them shortly before their arrival, but Swallow insisted on swiping the walls down with vinegar-water, and the droplets were ashy brown by the time they reached halfway down to the floor. Swallow consented to using her new powers to propel the wash-water across the floor, rather than a mop, but she and Xellos both got thoroughly spattered in the process – she kept overdoing. Xellos half suspected her of muffing it on purpose, (though perhaps not altogether consciously) to prove that she was no good at magic and that he should stop pushing her. All the same, when they found a mousehole in one corner, he did not suggest an extermination spell, spillover from which might have left the walls toxic or structurally unsound, but instead allowed Swallow to deal with the hole Kesh fashion: stuffing it with a wad of wool that had been impregnated with ground glass, then spackling over it with adobe. Its discovery, however, probably rendered Swallow more ruthless and less tactful in her attitude toward the clutter in the main room. She attacked it very methodically, starting from the corner nearest the door to their sleeping closet, working along that wall, and then outwards another yard or so and across the room, like a shuttle on a loom. Xellos trailed like a thread behind her, with some reluctance. He rather liked the clutter, himself, but on the other hand, he had to remind himself, he didn't want to lose his current campaign to a stray microorganism. Besides, mice brought fleas, and if he had known just what itching felt like back when he was Mazoku, he would have made much more use of it as a weapon.

She also went out of her way to flatter Garlic in other ways. Would he take her out to his garden and introduce her to all the plants? And Xellos too, since he was new here and still learning who was welcome in a garden and who wasn't? Would he mind horribly if she planted some blue corn along with the rest? She adored blue corn. She flirted Garlic out of his socks one evening and attended to his feet, said extremities proving to be nearly as neglected as the cluttered room. Hard to tell if it was arthritis or absent-mindedness that was the cause; the man had little difficulty getting down or up, but he always knelt; maybe he had trouble getting his feet out in front of him, or bending forward enough to do the nails. And when Xellos asked Garlic if there was a special reason he was keeping six jars of manzanita powder in six different parts of the room, Swallow dragged him out to the porch right then to berate him outside the range of Garlic's muffled hearing.

“Cut it out.”

Xellos blinked at her, smiling. “Cut out what?”

Swallow glared: “You know perfectly well. There are plenty of ways to go about this business without reminding Garlic that he's getting old and feeble. If you need to wallow in someone else's misery for a while I'll invite Waterstrider and Careful over for dinner some time.”

Xellos smirked. “Just how do you intend to enforce that directive?”

Swallow fumed silently for a moment or two, and then grinned. “I suppose I can't, really... but there are lots of little things I could do, like asking Hempseed to bring his best stuff over and getting everyone really happy.”

Even the idea was cheering her up enough for him to start tasting it. “That would be a very bad idea,” he told her seriously. “I'm all in favor of you growing grandiose and paranoid, but not until you know how to use your powers. And heavy use of cannabis can damage parts of your brain that you will need.”

“I'm pretty sure I'd rather go crazy my way than yours.”

The argument petered out to nothing, and Xellos made no promises, but he did nevertheless ease up on Garlic a little. Pushing Garlic's buttons was like teasing the Chimera, anyway; useful as an exercise, but the law of diminishing returns kicked in pretty quickly.

The two rooms in Red Beams House gradually lost their dense fug of dirt, mice, and old man and began to smell of herbs, soap, and, from time to time, sex. Garlic pottered in the garden, or muttered by the table, lecturing Xellos and Swallow and anyone else who felt like listening on the properties of medicinal plants and fungi. Swallow listened in the evenings and sang Doctors' chants with him sometimes, but mostly disappeared as soon as the sun came up and returned at supper, or later. It was planting-time in Chulkumas. Once Swallow and Xellos finished helping Garlic with his plot of ground (four heavy, sweating days of hand-digging, because Garlic's system of planting didn't lend itself well to plowed rows; to say nothing of the root system of the lemon tree that reigned over the middle section), Swallow and Fefinum went out to help the neighbors, or work in the fields held in common by the Serpentine. 

Xellos joined them from time to time, or researched in the Madrone Lodge library, or nosed about the town insinuating himself, as he had done in Tachas Touchas.   
The boys of the Chulkumas Bay Laurel Lodge, for some reason, were not interested in learning new fighting styles, and the malcontents among them favored cannabis or ergot, not conquest. Not much leverage to be had there, except on an individual basis, and the overlap between the ones who were romantic enough to be excited by Xellos' exoticism and the ones who were either competent enough or stupid enough to be useful tools was quite small.

Xellos also took over the cooking, once he realized that if he left it to the other two, it would be acorn mush or boiled amaranth with dried fruit and eggs for every meal. Garlic was too distracted to do anything that wasn't easy, and Swallow came back from her days in the fields drooping with exhaustion and too hungry to cook anything that took time. So that left Xellos, who found the emotional tenor of Red Beams House easier to adapt for than Five Toads had been. Emotional flavors no longer interfered quite so heavily with chemical ones. He began to learn the subtle differences between sage, basil, and dill, and how to tell when it was time to turn frying meat over by the sound of the sizzle. 

He got more help in this courtesy of Swallow's friends. More often than not, one or two of them would drift by after suppertime to talk of nothing much – or, in Hazelnut's case, before. Xellos had gone to Swallow's chosen-sister one day looking for Kemel, because the electric oven, when he tried to turn it on, had made an exploding sound and spat sparks at him. (Why some people had electic cookers and some wood-fired ones, he didn’t know.) Hazelnut had shown him to the Miller's Lodge, then accompanied him back to Red Beams house, where she'd taken one look at the state of the kitchen and declared, “Oh, you poor thing!” While Kemel had worked on the stove, Hazelnut had whisked the unfinished dishes and Xellos away to Was a Mill House. After that, she took an interest in Xellos' culinary education, all but snowing him under with recipes and tips, and coming by often to see how he was getting on or to present the household with a pie or a stack of flatbreads.

The others came by less frequently, though far from rarely. Shining, the only one of the group to have a child yet, liked to invite people to her household rather than go out, especially since Red Beams House was still half pharmacy and Pumpkin was crawling now. Her husband Fairweather gave Swallow and Xellos a clay bowl each, when it became clear that most of Garlic's dishes were actually medical tools, not eating implements. Gall, on the other hand, rather took to Garlic. When she was in the group, the conversation was more likely to turn to philosophy or storytelling, and Garlic was more likely to stay awake rather than dozing in a corner or stumping off to the Doctors' Lodge or the Serpentine Heyimas to attend to his own affairs. Hempseed drifted; it was often hard to remember, the next morning, if he had attended a particular evening or not. Blue Horse, the hunter who had not been there that first evening in Chulkumas, was the most likely to ask Xellos about his old life; Peregrine and the other Finders proved unexpectedly cagey. Betebbes, who had missed their first party in Chulkumas due to a hangover, turned out to be Fairweather's sister. She came by from time to time, but Swallow always managed to disappear the wine any time she did, so she mostly lurched off again without doing much.

The notorious Waterstrider was frequently discussed, but it took Xellos some time before he knew who she was. (Hazlenut went back and forth between whether she wanted to wait a year to get married to Kemel, so as not to share a Wedding night with Waterstrider and Careful, or whether she wanted to do it this year, to rob Waterstrider of some measure of importance. Kemel pointed out every time that she was giving Waterstrider far too much importance either way if she thought about it at all.) When they finally ran across each other in the wash-house one day, Xellos realized he had in fact seen her before, hovering in the background here and there in the Common Place, turning to stare at him when she didn't think anyone was looking: a plump, pretty woman whose lips turned down in a permanent pout, clothes fussy with embroidery, hair in elaborate combs.

I've been meaning to come by and say hello,” she told Swallow, “Only I didn't want to run into Hempseed accidentally, and besides, Mother hasn't been well these last two moons. The shaking isn't so bad she needs help eating, yet, but she did have to give up sewing except on the machine, and she's sad about that.”

Swallow made polite noises. Xellos noted, with some surprise, that she actually seemed to have some real sympathy for the woman. It had never appeared in the gossip sessions, though Swallow wasn't as quick to sharpen her wit on the subject as Hempseed or Hazelnut. Waterstrider was going on to describe all the horrible things Hempseed was doing in the aftermath of their romance of a year ago, and Careful was so wonderful, but he didn't understand about Hempseed, and he went on and on and on about how things had gone badly between himself and Swallow, even though that had been over for nearly a year...and besides he still hadn't learned the proper way to attend to the donkey, and Mother needed her... the grievances accumulated, and the sum of it all was that Waterstrider had not been able to make a proper welcome to Swallow's new _haibi._ “I'll see you in the Blood Lodge, though,” she told Swallow. (The Blood Lodge issued adolescent girls into adulthood as the Bay Laurel did for the boys, except that women were not expected to outgrow it, as men outgrew the Bay Laurel. The exact social and ceremonial functions of the Lodge had not been of great interest to Xellos). Waterstrider turned to him. “People aren't being too horrible to you, are they?” she asked, “I heard you sacrificed a position of great importance among your own people to be able to come with Swallow.”

“Not at all,” Xellos said, without clarifying which part of the question he was answering.

“Well, if ever you need a sympathetic ear, you just come right on over to Fireweed Blooms by the Corner House. We've always got room for one more there, especially a handsome one.”

Xellos smiled and cradled the back of his head with his hand, looking down, and then up sidelong at Waterstrider. “How generous! You actually remind me a little of a fiancée I had once, a few years ago.”

“Really!” Waterstrider's face lit up. “What happened?”

Xellos shrugged, letting his mouth droop a little. “She broke things off once she got to know my family better.”

“Oh,” sighed Waterstrider, “What a pity! Well, now you have Swallow.”

“Now I have Swallow,” Xellos agreed.

He had Swallow, and she was trying very hard not to laugh. She stopped trying after Waterstrider and her clean laundry left the wash-house. “You sure got on the right side of her quick!” she snickered, “Waterstrider loves a thwarted romance.”

Xellos shrugged again and checked the water level in the boiler that fed the laundry machines. “Was she flirting with me out of habit, or as some kind of revenge for whatever she imagines you did with Careful?”

“What do you mean, 'or?' ”

“Ah.”

Not until after they had set the machines to working on the Red Beams washing and were headed back out into the common place did Swallow ask the obvious question. “This fiancée of yours – was she the one the Stone Boy told me about, that decided you two were engaged without your help, or was it more serious than that?”

“What do you mean, 'or?' ” Xellos smiled. Martina had in a very vulnerable position: a formerly wealthy young woman whose home and family had been destroyed, forced to make her own way in the world. Xellos had admired the passion and courage with which she had approached the task. To say nothing of the strong, meaty hatred she bore toward the ones who had so wronged her.

“And would you have married her?”

“As I would marry you, if you wanted. Martina could have been an ideal thrall if she hadn't woken up when she did.” Martina would, in fact, have been a far better thrall than Swallow was, even discounting their upside-down balance of power. Martina had been dedicated, a strong magician in her own right, loyal in her fashion, and mad as a spoon. But that was water under the bridge. The child had discovered what he was too early in the game, and gone off and thrown herself at the feet of the next crowing cockerel she met, and the more fool she.

“I see. I think.” Swallow remained silent and unusually thoughtful for some days after that.

 

*****

Considering the buildup it got from the locals, Xellos was not terribly impressed by the World _wakwa._ Even in a town the size of Chulkumas, the Na valley lacked both the tax structure and the dedicated personnel to manage true splendor in their community festivals. Some, though not all, of the musicians were quite skilled, as were the players in the semi-sacred theatrical performances. The best dancers and the officiants at the various ceremonies might wear long cloaks worked with feathers or shining beads, but everyone else made do with bits and pieces and brightly-dyed vests that went on over their workaday clothes. The dances consisted of long, curving lines of people doing very simple steps. (Xellos was amused to find out that the grapevine step was still called that, after all these centuries.) The food was, except for sweets for children on the Third Day, utterly ordinary, albeit plentiful, and few of the entertainments were anything that required rehearsal. Horse-races and livestock parades (the Kesh were too tactful even to give out prizes for the best heifer, though the distinctions were clear enough to see) and funny little displays by the young children. Xellos watched a small boil of Chulkumas youngsters doing the Ant Dance on the Third Day and wondered how Bounce was getting on. 

Nonetheless, there were bits to savor here and there, especially on the first night. The communal anguish of the Mourning Night was so cloying sweet Xellos felt a little ill from it all, even though none of Swallow's acquaintances, nor their parents, had died, and he and she had waited out the bonfires and dirges from the porch of Red Beams House. Xellos thought he recognized snatches of tune from the ones Swallow had hummed, his first night as a human, when she had sung lullabies in a misplaced attempt to comfort him. “The Going Westward songs,” she agreed, “that we sing to the souls of the dying to help them go. And if you sing the tune backwards, there are the birthing songs. I kept going back and forth when I was singing to you that time.” Swallow shivered. She had glued herself to his side and wrapped herself in every blanket in the household. But she would not do magic to relieve the pressure. “There is no pressure – you're happy enough – I'm just cold. I've told you, and I've told you; I can't take hold of anyone's unhappiness but yours.”

On the Second and Third days, the shoe was on the other foot – Swallow stripped down to her thinnest, gauziest shirt and skirt to bask in her neighbors' pride and excitement, while Xellos drank water splashed with white wine, trying to quench the fires in his throat. It could have been worse, though; he had, by necessity, attended other human celebrations now and then, and the onslaught was actually not as bad as what he'd been braced for. He even felt able to join Swallow for the evening to watch Hazelnut and Kemel, resplendent in long red and yellow vests, dancing the Wedding, and try to remember where he'd heard the tune they were dancing to. Or perhaps it was just that there were only so many cheerful melodies that could be set to waltz time and all the various songs came to resemble each other over the centuries. Oddly enough, Waterstrider and Careful were not among the couples in the center of the Dancing Place; someone told him Careful had gotten cold feet at the last minute, but that Waterstrider had at least not kicked him out of the household over it.

And then, holiday time was over, and everyone went back to what they had been doing before. Plowing time was mostly over, but Swallow continued to find things for herself and Fefinum to do; hauling loads of clay for the Potter's Art, or sand for the Glass Art, or working a treadmill generator when the Yellow Adobe heyimas got flooded and had to be pumped out. Swallow was able to spend some magic on that one, making the machines pump faster. She sang with the Blood Lodge and sometimes the Serpentine scholars, but she didn't seem to have a single dedicated teacher, as she had in Tachas Touchas. Or if she did, she was keeping it secret. Somehow, though, she never seemed to have both time and energy for further lessons in magic. She practiced the old tricks – Xellos could feel the drain sometimes – a marginal tingling warmth from nowhere in particular. Sometimes, when they did laundry, Swallow powered the motor on the washtub with magic, rather than turning on the switch. But nothing new. Nothing bigger.

Xellos prided himself on his patience. Well, he had, once. He found Swallow in the horse barn one morning some three weeks after the World. She was getting Fefinum loaded up with her pack saddle. Another hauling job, then. “What is it today?” he asked.

“Blue Marshes,” Swallow answered cheerfully. “Cattail shoots and roots for eating, cattail leaves and reeds for weaving, and bamboo for, oh, all kinds of things – you know.” She hesitated a bit at Xellos' glare. “Would you like to come with us?”

“And why is that your job?”

“What?”

“We have enough to eat, no need for baskets, and neither of us is a member of the Wood Art, to be doing much with bamboo. Why all this dead-stupid slogging when you have better things to do?”

Swallow closed her eyes briefly. “Come with us today.”

“Do you imagine I will develop a newfound respect for basket weavers?”

“No.” Swallow began buckling Fefinum's halter into place. “But that last remark of yours is the start of at least two different arguments. Or discussions, anyway. We probably need to have both of them, and I'll be too tired tonight. Go grab a water gourd and meet us by the Lakwanwe rocks.”

Xellos calculated. The supper beans were soaking already, there would be fresh cattail shoots from this expedition Swallow was insisting on, and they could do without bread for one day. Bridge, of the Tachas Touchas Finders, had visited on his way up to the Kastoha train stop and given them some Valley rice. Maybe he'd boil that up. “Fine.”

****

The Lakwanwe boulders were big as horses, or a little larger- pieces of mountain not yet covered in dirt or the spring grasses. Scramble to the top of one of them and you could see half the town of Chulkumas spread out below you. A couple of the Bay Laurel boys were doing just that when Xellos approached the group bound for the Marshes. There were some five or six people and two donkeys, whose presence lent Fefinum an unwonted degree of majesty. Swallow was the only human he recognized, confirming to him that she was grasping at straws, deliberately seeking work that would keep her away from her magic studies. A few minutes later, though, Hazelnut jogged up, waving, and trotted beside them. “I'm not going the whole way with you – I want to tickle trout over in Small Fern Creek.”

“Be welcome, sister.” So the start of the walk was taken by gossip. There was some sort of trouble among the Blood Clowns, it seemed, though Hazelnut was vague about it; the Clowns kept secrets. But someone was overstepping, or someone else was being a bully, and there were arguments about the purpose of Clowning.

“Let me guess,” Xellos put in. “There are Clowns who make fun of lustful old women and bragging hunters and thieving Pig people, who use jokes to tell us that the world is as it is and to shame the people who don't fit. And there are other clowns, both funnier and more frightening, who make fun of xenophobic shepherds and gentle, domineering scholars, who use jokes to tell us that the world must change. And some of the women who came to the Blood Clowns because they felt safe and included nowhere else now wish to tell some other people they are not really clowns, as they were once told they were not really people.”

“That's it!” Hazelnut declared with passion. “That's it exactly, all of it! How does a no-house man know so much about the Blood Clowns?”

“Even in the Time Outside the World, there were clowns, Hazelnut.”

Soon after that, the track narrowed and the group spread itself out a little. Hazelnut dropped behind them and Xellos was, more or less, alone with Swallow and Fefinum. He felt the shifting planes of Swallow's emotions as she braced herself for the argument she wanted and turned to look him in the eye. “So.” She said, her voice soft and flat. “What do you think I should be doing that's better than this?”

“The best thing you can be doing right now is developing your powers,” Xellos answered with equal bluntness. “Anyone can dig cattail roots. You're the only person in the valley who can do what you can do.”

“I am still doing that,” Swallow promised. “The other day I was practicing with some dogs; I dewormed the lot of them, and one of them had a fatty tumor on his ribs and I was able to freeze it off, and I'm working out how to do the same with the little one that one of the others has in their guts; that has to go slower so the intestine can heal itself – it's probably still better to get rid of that kind with surgery since I can't stitch things back together from the Four Houses, but I'm learning...”

He should have seen that one coming, Xellos reflected, he really should have. Twisted and perverse though it was to use black magic for healing, it was exactly like Swallow to do so. Nevertheless.... “You're thinking too small,” he told her. “And you're still trying to use Doctor's work to wriggle your way into your mother's good graces; that's not going to happen, Swallow. Agate gets too much power from refusing your gifts.” He closed his eyes most of the way, trying to gauge the sting he was delivering only through his astral sense, not through what his human brain imagined the effect might be, and caught a drop or two of musky sweetness, like grapes just beginning to turn.

“You think I don't know that?” Swallow's voice had gone tight and angry. Fefinum twitched her hears at her. “I gave that pain away to you back on the Haibob trail. There's nothing left but ashes.”

Xellos smirked. “And a generous gift it was, but you gave me the harvest, not the tree. Family pain is not so easily uprooted. However, we're straying from the point, which is that you're limiting yourself. If you truly wanted to impress your family, you could fly back home on a rainbow, wrapped in thunderclouds.”

“Dogshit,” Swallow replied succinctly. “Even Lina Backwards knew better than to start down that path.”

“Lina's family is actually much harder to impress. The fact remains that there is no reason for you to keep floating around the margins of the valley and subsist on scraps. You have abilities, and I don't just mean on the astral level. Your Finder gifts for telling people what they want to hear and making them like you have uses in the nine towns, too. Do you want to be Speaker for the Serpentine? You could be, inside a year or two.” Within five years she could be the head of a cult, with followers all over the Omorn penninsula: a few spectacular displays of magic, a few gnomic utterances, and some assiduous work on Xellos' part, and she could be leading an army across the Range of Heaven by the end of the decade. But not if she wasted her powers on worm-eaten mutts.

“What I want,” Swallow said, “is to finish coming home and let my souls find their center again. I want to meet Adsevin's baby when she comes into the Third House, and Hazelnut's and Kemel's baby too, if they have one. They probably will. I want to eat Old Hen casserole and Red and Green stir-fry and Sasi-rice dolmas with sheep's milk cheese and chives and some of Gall's plum-and-pepper jam, and sing the Two-Quail song, and see how it all looks now, with one eye in the Four Houses.”

“You say that,” Xellos told her, smiling, “But quietism really doesn't suit you, Swallow. You'd have left us all to fend for ourselves long before we got to Choum-Rekwit if it did.”

“I don't know that word.”

“Quietism is an old name for the old lie that peace and calm and comfort are the highest good we can achieve, and worth whatever price we pay for them.”

“I do miss the Exchange,” Swallow said, tacitly admitting a degree of boredom. Even now, when she mentioned anything to do with the dead City of Mind, the words brought out a funny wobble of guilt and anxiety. Xellos would have thought she'd be over it by now, but apparently not. “And I'm still thinking about how to arrange things so I can still go out with the Finders sometimes – you'd have to come with, unless we manage to make the bond more flexible somehow, and that would be a tough sell. Peregrine's noticed how you like to make trouble, you know.”

“You 'arrange it' by doing it, Swallow. Peregrine doesn't have the power to stop you.”

“I can't go on being at home in the valley if I'm unmindful of everyone in it,” she answered with unfortunate perspicacity. Well, give her another year with these sheep and she'd weigh that option differently. But it was a useful reminder to him; Swallow was not tempted by power or revenge. But she could be tempted. 

“In the meantime,” Xellos suggested, “You could think of your magic work as a wonderful opportunity to meet and develop relationships with the Four-house people.” And once a few of them had tried to kill her, it might adjust her attitude a little. 

“Indeed.” Swallow smiled a very small, in-turned smile and Xellos suppressed a wholly unreasonable pang of jealousy. What was she seeing, who was she meeting, in her visions of the Astral Plane that Xellos could no longer reach? But she might even be thinking about him, after all. “But I'm not at a point where I can make that my work, and even the Speakers and the visionaries take on drudge tasks from time to time. The visionaries especially, since they need work that can be interrupted and that help them stay steady. Besides – and this is the other thing I wanted to talk to you about – it is not quite true that our household has enough to eat with just the garden and the gathering and the goat and the chickens. We're horse-poor, as they say. Since we don't have any pastureland in our household, this old woman here,” Swallow patted Fefinum's shoulder, “needs to earn her keep with the rest of us. Most of what she and I earn in the course of a day goes toward her food, which is not as much as a horse needs but quite a bit more than a donkey. And Chulkumas is a horse-breeding town, so we have to scramble a bit to find the work.”

Xellos looked down in real, rather than feigned, chagrin, because this problem had simply not occurred to him. Middle-class economics had featured in his spying career only insofar as it provided innkeepers and waitresses with teapots. The Inverse and her companions had eschewed horses as a matter of convenience- favoring the greater maneuverability of being on foot with emergency flight capabilities. Among the nobles, lackeys, and wannabes of the various courts, horses had been status-symbols, but he hadn't spent much time thinking about why.

“I don't quite know what we'll do after the Summer,” Swallow brooded. “It may be that Fefinum will have to go work the Line without me.” 

The welling sadness that accompanied this remark did not surprise Xellos, but did engender a new thought. “Fefinum is every bit as much your chosen-sister as Hazelnut is, isn't she?”

Swallow chuckled a little. “Cousin, maybe. Fefinum is Obsidian, not Serpentine. But yes, if she goes away for the season, I will miss her terribly.”

Xellos found himself moved by this declaration of loyalty. But not so moved that he didn't tuck the information away for later. She might be more vulnerable after the Summer.


	14. Taming Worry

The first friend Xellos made in Chulkumas under his own power was neither human, convenient, nor particularly welcome. They met for the first time, indirectly, under the auspices of the Doctors' Lodge. Swallow must have been reporting on her practice with the dogs to someone, because she got recruited to the task of gelding the spring crop of puppies. Kesh dog-breeding practices were fairly haphazard; females got spayed at half a year old, usually, by which time the people who attended to such things had some idea of which ones might be worth breeding after all. Males were neutered so regularly as to make it an occasion of remark and at least one or two discussions among the notables of the Obsidian if one were to be spared; there were enough feral dogs out on the hunting side to satisfy any breeding bitch with a few hours to spare. A tame breeding male had to be extraordinary and prove it early. 

Generally speaking, the dogs left intact were ones who displayed clear characteristics of belonging to one of three categories – too loose to be breeds as such. Big, deep-voiced hechi dogs with fluffy fur and pointed ears guarded the towns from incursions by their wild cousins and followed children or gatherers to the Hunting Side to keep an eye and nose out for trouble. The hunters did not take hechi with them unless they were after bear or boar. Instead, they favored the lop-eared and occasionally smooth-coated ou hounds. The curly-haired, morose-looking dui were the sheepdogs – more of the Old English or Newfoundland variety that could mingle with the flock without alarming it, than the anxious, sharp-witted ones like collies or heelers that frightened the sheep into obedience. Gathering the scattered flocks was often a job for donkeys, or, more often, children.

Well, so Swallow was visiting the mothers of Dogtown and compromising their progeny, and Xellos tagged along. She managed her task very quickly; scooping up the puppies as they came sniffing over or as they played, removing the testes with a twist of her fingers and a tiny, precisely placed burst of power, as if they were ripe berries, dropping them in a little pouch that she would later take up to Buzzard Hill, and then soothing her squeaking victims with a few strokes and murmured words and bites of lamb meat. She cauterized the wounds as she made them; there was no blood and less pain than there would have been with the obsidian scalpel that was the usual tool for this task. The puppies licked her hands adoringly. The misogynist jokes all but wrote themselves in Xellos' mind, but he had no one to pass them on to; the Kesh had no equivalent phrase to “pussy-whipped,” nor even “henpecked,” being too much of a matriarchy to find either condition worth mentioning, unless taken to into the realm of the abusive. He had heard someone being described as “under her husband's sausage,” once, but it really didn't translate to the current situation. Besides, if there was a joke to be made on the subject of Swallow's talent for emasculation, then he was surely the butt of it. Not a role he preferred to play unless there was a specific end in view.

Discomfited by this accumulation of metaphors, Xellos wandered away from his thrall and poked his nose here and there among the other doghouses. A few of them barked warnings or greetings, or came up to sniff his shoes or his crotch, but most of them had other business right now. The sounds of the squalling puppies had left several of the dogs quite upset. One of them, a scruffy, confused-looking creature with rough black-and-tan fur and batlike ears, growled and slunk toward him, showing its teeth, threatening. Canine emotions were usually harder to pick up on than human ones, but this one stank of fear. Xellos looked at it coolly. The dog growled again and prepared to spring. Xellos waited, holding its gaze challengingly. As the dog launched into the air, he reacted, popping a knee up into chest. As the creature fell backward, Xellos grabbed at its front shoulders with both hands and shook it until it yelped. “Don't you dare!” he snapped at it. He pushed the creature over backward on and held it, belly up, against the ground. “Don't you dare try that shit on me. I serve the Beastmaster and you will treat me with respect!” He was snarling every bit as loudly as the dog was, and some part of himself watched and boggled at the strength of his reaction to this paltry threat from the pathetic cur. But he had been holding himself back too long.

The dog went limp and whined submission and Xellos let it up. It rolled over, then slunk on its belly up toward him, ears flattened against its head. Xellos, after a moment, knelt down so that it could lick him under the chin: doggish for “I hear and obey, my liege.” Xellos put one firm hand on its forehead. I'm the boss. Behave yourself. 

Formalities concluded, Xellos scratched the dog behind the ears and it thumped its tail on the ground. Swallow came over. “I've never seen that one act friendly before,” she remarked, impressed.

“Sometimes the aggressive ones are like that,” Xellos told her. “Especially the ones who are doing it as a fear reaction. Show them you're tough enough to handle them and they'll look to you for protection afterward if you let them. They attack, but they really want to be defeated.”

“And are you one of those?”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Swallow shook her head. “It looks like this one's yours, now. You'll either need to train him properly or put him down.” 

Gentle, softhearted Swallow sounded completely indifferent as to which of these options he took. Xellos found himself unaccountably angry. “You Valley people really just don't like dogs at all, do you?” he complained. “Loyalty, courage, obedience... those are not important virtues, from your point of view. These...people-” he gestured around at the dogtown, “would give their lives for you, and how do you repay them? You refuse to let them past the porches of your households and you make them a byword for gullibility and herd thinking.”

Swallow looked at him, startled, then silently tilted her head in the direction of Buzzard Hill; an invitation. Xellos growled but strode after her. The dog trotted after him, hopefully.

Swallow remained silent all the way to Buzzard Hill: thinking, Xellos hoped. Not until she had dropped off her pouch of puppy balls on the midden heap and they had turned back toward town did she speak. “There is something in what you say,” she told Xellos, “about whether and how we take the dogs' gifts.”

“Of course there is.”

“They are not comfortable gifts, those ones. Needful, sometimes, but dangerous. Like electricity. It's easy to go too far...” She fell silent again, musing. Xellos' new pet galloped off and came back, dragging a fallen branch that was half again as long as it was and growling happily. “Courage and loyalty are for troubled times,” Swallow went on. “That's when those gifts are needed, isn't it? And using those gifts can lead to the kind of situation where you need them, if you aren't mindful.”

“And the valley prefers quietism.” Most of the time, Xellos was content to let Swallow lecture him; he was used to leading from below and letting his tools grow overconfident. Just today, though, it irritated him.

“All the same,” Swallow said, “I think nearly every human in the valley counts at least one or two dogs as good friends. It's just that nearly all of us have also lost someone – if only a pet himpi – to dogs that were loyal to someone else.” The dog spotted a jackrabbit out among the wild oats and tore after it, barking madly and futilely. Swallow laughed.

“He's your kind of idiot, Xellos. See if you can wash the fleas off him and teach him how to live with humans.”

****

And so Xellos acquired a dog. He seriously considered following Swallow's first instructions and putting the creature down, brutally and in front of an audience. But it wouldn't be enough to get him (and Swallow thereby) kicked out of the valley, and he was already shunned, and besides... “Oh, you've got a dog with you! Good idea!” It was Blue Horse, seeing Xellos and his new acquisition headed for one of the downstream bathing pools in the river.

“How so?”

“He'll be mindful of you when you're out on the Hunting Side – I think you need that.”

“I'm more capable than I look.”

“Your instincts are all wrong,” Blue Horse disagreed. “You're overconfident. You need someone with a better nose and ears with you, or you're going to step on a rattlesnake one of these days.”

And the hunter was right, of course. Xellos' fighting skills were honed against humans and magic workers. They could be applied elsewhere, but for centuries, he hadn't had to fear harm from any other beings. His recurrent horror at his new mortality didn't always override habit. Besides, training the dog was something to do.

He named it Worry, which covered most of its favorite predilections. Some quirk of the genetic lottery had produced a terrier out of time, and Worry's chief delight was to take hold of sticks, and shoes and bits of rag or rope, drag them around, and shake them violently. It did the same, much more proudly, the rare times it actually managed to get hold of a rat or a mouse or a garter snake. Xellos kept it well away from the himpi pens. The name also caught something of Worry's fawning adoration and eagerness to please. A few pats behind the ears, and a few chicken livers and whatnot, and Xellos had a thrall to surpass all other thralls in terms of devotion, though the devotion was in inverse proportion to ability. Worry was fairly stupid, as dogs went – it took ages to build up a working vocabulary with him – and the dog's adoration was shot through with anxiety, which heightened every time Worry failed to understand a command, and every time Xellos moved out of its sight. The effect at the astral level resembled bitter chocolate, or beer made with hops. Xellos found himself saying, for the second time in as many weeks, “You remind me of a fiancée I once had.” Swallow, listening to the howls and scratches at the front door of Red Beams House, consented at last to learn how to cast a sleeping spell.

Xellos persisted, though, to the audible approval of quite a few neighbors who really had no business casting judgment on his activities one way or another, and the dog learned to behave. Worry's favorite days were the ones where the whole household (bar the chickens and the goat) went out gathering on the Hunting Side, and Worry could follow a good run with with a chance to show what an alert and fearless guard he was, in-between nosing about for rat nests and rabbit trails. Worry also liked the times Xellos had work to do among the gardens, for the much same reasons, probably. Xellos took to bringing a knot of thick rope along with him, for Worry to play with. The dog would sit up on his haunches, shivering with eagerness, and Xellos would throw the knot, or hold it by one end and allow Worry to play tug-of-war, or, if he was busy, Worry would pick it up and put it down, over and over, or give it a good shake to break its neck. 

Xellos saw to it that Worry got immersed in the swimming hole and scrubbed down with soap every so often as a matter of self-defense, since when Worry got smelly Xellos had to bear the brunt of it. (Swallow, amused, said, “You used to smell a little like that yourself, you know, when you were still living in Coyote's house. I only noticed in close quarters, but it was there.” This revelation put several hundred years' worth of odd reactions from various people into new perspective and was otherwise unhelpful.) He scratched the creature's ears now and then, while the dog's every move and emanation sang, “Yes, yes, oh, yes. Goodgoodgood.” Had Worry been human, this attitude would have been unbearable, instead of just uncomfortable. But then, had Worry been human, he would not have been so happy.

“He really is the most useless person,” Xellos observed to Garlic one evening when they were sitting on the porch of Red Beams House, sipping watered wine and waiting for Swallow to finish singing at the Blood Lodge and come home for supper. Worry, having failed to get Xellos to throw his knot for him, picked it up again and deposited it at Garlic's feet. Garlic obligingly threw it off the side of the porch and Worry leaped over all three steps and tore after it. “But all the same,” said Xellos, “I think I would be a little sad if tomorrow I went out to work in the garden and he didn't show up and try to roll on the beets.”

Garlic nodded thoughtfully. “It's times like this I believe you when you say you weren't always human, boy.”

Xellos tilted his head. “This is a human thing?”

“Yup. I've heard about it from people who know. Humans get pleasure out of taking care of other people, just like they get pleasure out of sex, or dancing, or eating good food. Well, think about it! We'd never take care of babies the way we need to if that wasn't built in!” Garlic threw Worry's knot again.

“I've always heard that one the other way around; humans take care to show the affection they feel.”

“We like to think so,” said Garlic, “but it can go either way; my favorite granddaughter now is the one who had colic when she was a baby, and needed someone to hold her and walk around all night, my favorite shirt is the one I wove the cloth for myself, and my favorite olive tree is the one I planted for my mother for Sunreturn, sixty years ago. And you ought to be grateful that it is so, because half the time I think it's the only reason Swallow puts up with you. You ought to be giving her some of that care you're giving the dog.”

Xellos threw Worry's knot. “I give her what I have to give.” Which included a great deal of attention, care, and stimulation, if not what Hazelnut referred to as “warm squishies.”

“You'd have a lot more to give if you could take a gift yourself now and again.”

“How do you mean?” Xellos' ability to accept gifts had thus far netted him two good knives – a large and a small one – a clay bowl and a horn spoon, three shirts, a second pair of trousers, a kilt, a pair of sandals, and a heyimas vest (undyed, like an adolescent's, since none of the Five Houses had yet taken him in.) But Garlic just shook his head and wheezed. Worry trotted up, dropped his knot at Xellos' feet, and looked up at him, quivering with eagerness.


	15. Dancing the Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for this chapter for an incident closely resembling date rape, followed by violent magical retribution. See end notes for a summary. If you want to skip it, stop reading after Swallow says, "we'll do Black Sheep Meadow," and pick up again after the set of asterisks with, "As one might predict..."

 

Spring was here, for perhaps a week or two, after which it would give up all pretensions to being a separate season and simply merge into the long, slow death of the dry season. The pastures were suddenly bright with pink and purple and orange flowers, not just the yellow ones of the rainy season, lambs and rabbits bounced about, the fruit trees were dressed in fluttering pink-and-white silk and the nut trees in long strings of green-gold beads. The days grew warm enough to do without a jacket even after sunset. The geese clattered away north and were replaced by swallows and coots, while the ducks surrounded themselves with meeping fuzzballs. The air buzzed with insects. And other things. In the valley, the name for this time of year was “Before the Moon.”

“I might go out with the Blood Clowns, but I don't think I'll dance this year,” Hazelnut said at one of the porch-side gossip sessions. “Kemel and I only just got married, after all. Besides, the sex at the Moon is never very good, you know? You barely have time to tell them one or two things you like, and that's if they're listening.”

“I don't mind,” said Gall, briefly.

“It's not a problem I really run into,” mused Swallow. “Maybe I'm less picky than you are.”

Hazelnut laughed. “That, and everybody and their fleas know what you like. You could dance all nine nights and never run into anyone who wasn't an ex-lover or a friend of one, you old whirlpool.”

“Which comes of being less picky,” Swallow agreed, smiling.

Kemel squirmed a bit and cleared his throat. “Er- Whitefingers – Swallow has told you about the Moon Wakwa, hasn't she? Because sometimes when foreigners hear about it... well.”

Xellos smiled indulgently. “If you mean do I know you have a town-wide orgy, then yes. Swallow and I have not discussed the matter extensively, but I read Pandora's description. It sounded quite tame, for a Saturnalia: children and adolescents out of the way, (though I wonder how many of them sneak back and watch), no incest, no official drug use, designated peacekeepers... as safety valves go, I suppose it's amusing enough.” He watched his audience shift uncomfortably, as they perhaps envisioned the kind of decadence Xellos was really used to. Or tried to, at least. Xellos doubted their complacent and parochial imaginations stretched that far. “I do not plan to dance myself,” he added, and watched them all sigh with relief, “as it seems like the sort of thing one should wait to be invited to, neh? But certainly if Swallow wants to attend, I don't mind.”

This comment, too, seemed to sit uneasily with Swallow's friends... perhaps they expected some jealousy, for the form of the thing. Certainly, every human one of them seemed to have trouble wrapping their heads around a long-term relationship that was sexual without being romantic. Which meant they kept misreading Xellos and giving Swallow unhelpful advice, but really, it was funny watching Swallow try to correct them. “After all,” Xellos said, still smiling, “it would be unwise to require monogamy from Swallow.”

This discomfited Swallow as well, for some odd reason. Had she previously imagined that she was just waiting for the right man to come along? However, she did not immediately act on the sudden tingle of hurt she had sustained. Her face went shut and inward looking, and then cleared.

“It's funny,” she said with a tiny smile of her own, “I've been less restless in that regard than usual since I came home.”

“Well, if that changes, _giyakwunshe,_ no need to hold yourself back on my account.”

Swallow shrugged. “I hear you. It may yet happen; I've been drawn to strangeness and novelty all my life long.” She snorted suddenly, and turned toward him with a smirk. “So if anyone stranger than you comes along, maybe you can let me know.”

*****

 

Swallow remembered the conversation some days later, as the preparations for the Moon really got going, but Red Beams House went on just as usual, or at least, their corner of it did. Garlic, like Xellos but for different reasons, had decided not to dance this year, and the Moon was primarily a Men's wakwa; Swallow had no ceremonial duties connected with it until the Nine Nights themselves. There wasn't a lot going on that evening. No visitors, Fefinum drowsing in the barn after a day of playing and eating her head off at Whunyi meadows while the humans had hunted crayfish and gathered greens. The sunset air had the soft feel it got sometimes before a rain; the wind was nearly still, and their household, too, had picked up a feeling of stillness. Xellos lounged against the porch railing, reading a book, with Worry snoring beside him. Garlic's mortar and pestle rang in the main room and he wheezed steadily. Xellos had expressed some irritation at the wheezing when they'd first moved in, but Swallow found it oddly comforting. Her father, Salt Wind, had wheezed like that all through her childhood, dying very slowly of the glass-dust illness. Swallow remembered long, slow, summer afternoons up in the hills, with the crickets and cicadas buzzing, the watching quail calling out from time to time, and that steady, soothing wheeze. She added to the music of wheezing and ringing mortar and snoring dog with her own handwork, rhythmically snapping asparagus stems in two, dividing them into the fibrous bottoms that would go for pickling or soup, and the tender tops that would be fried in butter within half an hour. She breathed in peace and let it still her bones. But she knew the peace to be an illusion. Or, at least, incomplete.

Swallow's new senses (to say nothing of her own loins) told her that beneath the stillness was the thrumming tension of the buildup to the Moon; she couldn't hear the singing in the Obsidian heyimas from here, but it was going on. Touching the roof of the building was, as they said, like touching a lion. People in the town were seeing each other differently, through lust's eyes: you looked at people you'd known for years and years and thought about what it would be like to have sex with them. Even the ones you'd actually had sex with, and the ones you would never touch until the Blue Clay sang the Moon and the Obsidian sang the Wine. So she looked covertly at Garlic, who as fellow-Serpentine was off-limits even during the Moon, and admired the intensity of his frown of concentration, the steady competence of his hands. 

She saw the same concentration marking the lips and eyebrows of Xellos, who was off-limits only for the next fourteen days, poor coyote. She was glad he'd decided not to dance, but it did make things harder on him; if neither of them were dancing this year, then the period of abstinence beforehand would not have applied, but Swallow was dancing, so it did. And during the nine days of the _wakwa,_ nobody had sex except together, under the Moon. So even once Swallow was getting some relief, Xellos would get only a double dose of celibacy. Well, any adolescent still living on the coast was stuck in exactly the same trap, after all, and it wasn't as if Xellos didn't know how to take himself in hand as needed. In fact, he'd done it in their room last night, in front of Swallow, teasing her. Maybe next year would be different, depending on how far into the Valley he let his souls come. This year he could do without for a while. 

Besides, it had indeed been a new kind of experience to hold back. More usually, between the two of them, lust begot lust, and they came together quickly, as though desire were pain to be relieved immediately. With that option curtailed, Swallow was forced to observe, to see how his desires flowed separately from hers, to endure tension as he found release. “Though you needn't endure,” he told her, “if you don't want to. The purpose of the abstinence period appears to be to make sure everyone's wound tightly enough to have a good time even if they don't end up with their first choice of partners. I rather doubt that you have any problems in that department. I could even teach you a spell to ensure enough privacy that no one else would guess you're cheating...”

“I would know. The Moon is about trust; I'm not about to break it. And what's a 'department,' anyway?” When Xellos explained, she said, “We would say flock, or house, or basket, depending,” and the conversation moved on. Swallow continued to allow herself to – it wasn't really listening or watching – to _attend_ when something told her Xellos was taking care of himself, and somehow doing that awoke a whole new part in her... her astral sense, as he called it. She suddenly saw the little threads and currents of desire crisscrossing the whole town of Chulkumas, marking this one and that one. She couldn't pass by anyone without finding out how many of them wanted her (fewer than she had sometimes imagined, but not so few as to be disheartening,) or someone else. The cobwebby density of adolescent lust was expected and amusing. The ardor sustained by some of the younger children was a little startling, though when she thought about it maybe it shouldn't be – she'd done her share of exploring in her clearwater years, after all, to say nothing of the mental and emotional changes that preceded the physical. The whole experience was as dizzying in its way as her earlier revelation about how much hidden unhappiness people held. It was as if the entire world were made only of sex.

“It's like learning to read,” Xellos assured her. “You know how Bounce would look over your shoulder at a book sometimes and say, 'Oh, that's a Ku! That's a Ta!' But eventually you will know these things without thinking about them, and your awareness will be more...proportionate. As your understanding broadens, you will be able to act on this knowledge without thinking much of it, just as you do not need to think about seeing or touching to catch a ball. It can be very useful.”

Here in the soft evening, it didn't seem all that useful. Swallow could, if she looked, see that Garlic had many waving tendrils of longing reaching out not very far, that she herself had her own, stretching farther and thinner. Upstairs and across the hall were cloudy; she could gauge the collective tide of sexual energy in the other households but not pick out individual fish swimming in it. And Xellos... There was a broad, well established vein connecting him and herself – not _the_ bond, but its own thing, the existence of which Swallow took comfort in, because she could pretend it would have been there even had the Carrion Gyre not happened. And there was an aura of... potential, of stickiness. _Sex is far too useful to be confined to particular preferences,_ he'd told her ages ago. Swallow couldn't spot any other reaching tendrils besides the one that linked the two of them, but if some other person wanted him... _perhaps I'd better practice not being jealous now._

Xellos noticed when her attention shifted to him, as he nearly always did, and without changing his outward aspect much at all, stopped reading and scratching Worry's ears and started posing, with a book and a dog. Swallow would swear his eyelashes grew longer, his shoulders broader. He emitted a slightly triumphant aura: _Made you look!_ He did that every time: Swallow still didn't know quite how he knew, since even the bond between them did not do the same for her. Maybe it was a spy thing – or maybe Xellos simply didn't think about her as often as she thought about him so there was nothing to notice. Oh, well. She remembered old Shadow's advice about this kind of thing: _you're not going to change him; when you can choose, choose to find things endearing, not annoying._ Xellos enjoyed being looked at, Swallow enjoyed looking; what was the problem, exactly? So Swallow looked.

She saw danger, the kind that was only a syllable away from romance. He really did look like a White Clown, not just in his height and pallor but also the remote expression on his face, and the way his graceful movements seemed slow, even when he was moving quickly. Even his berry-bright hair seemed an ambiguous symbol: Many of the sweetest fruits in the valley were almost that color, but the ones that matched the closest were poisonous. Oh, Swallow, now you're being silly. Because what would she have said if his hair had been some other color? Brown could be dirt, or venison, or shit. Red could be apples or nightshade. Colors did not have moral values.

“Xellos?”

“Mmm?” At least he did not pretend she had interrupted his book.

“Did people inside the Cyst think you were beautiful?”

“Eh?” He blinked at her, then swept his lashes down, cupped the back of his head with his hand, and tipped it downward, hiding a nonexistent blush with his hair and his crooked elbow. “Well...” he tipped his head back up and cast a seductive look at Swallow from under his eyebrows. The blue-and white scarf tied across his forehead emphasized the look almost as well as his front hair had done before it grew too long. “What do _you_ think, Swallow?”

Swallow thought he didn't really expect that move to fluster her. “I think you're startling and exotic,” she said, “but if you mean I should make a guess about what all those backward-headed easterners think of you... You must be about average, I guess. You know how to act the way beautiful people act, but you kind of... turn it on and off, which you wouldn't, otherwise. I would guess that the people who do want you, when they picture you in their minds, they think of your whole body, moving or posed. Not just your face.”

_Now_ he really was a bit flushed. Xellos' skin often showed his mood better than his expression did. He still smiled, as ever. “Very good, Swallow. Well done. And yes, you're right: within the Barrier Lands, I would be considered, at most, only slightly better-looking than average. Many of the people who notice anything in me imagine that they are the only ones to do so and congratulate themselves on their sensitivity. Although I can't be certain about that last bit you mentioned, of course.”

“Well,” Swallow sighed, “that fits.”

“Why do you ask?” He seemed to be genuinely curious.

“I don't really know.”

*****

Xellos began the First Night of the Moon alone in his and Swallow's chamber, sitting in a posture of meditation, wearing nothing but his old tan shirt. He had considered using the distraction of the wakwa to sneak about in some of the less open regions of the town – other people's houses, say, or the Blood Lodge portions of the Obsidian heyimas. But participation in the Moon, while intense, involved less than a third of the town's population. He'd be better off waiting for the Wine, half a year from now, unless he had a specific goal in mind for snooping. There were things that could be done within the context of an orgy, too, to sow discord or develop influence, but he couldn't do any of the ones that required anonymity. Not here. Having thus established to his own satisfaction that he was not shirking his mazoku duty, he determined to simply allow himself to luxuriate in the wash of feeling building around him – so much more intense with a human body than previously. He might not be dancing, but with Swallow there, it hardly mattered.

Over on the other side of town, the drums pounded, deep and loud enough to rattle windows. The beat was markedly more syncopated than the run-of-the mill Kesh music; a sort of samba. One of the traveler Pandora's informants had waxed extremely enthusiastic about the Moon music – its infectiousness and passion. As things got going, over there in the Dancing Place, people would sing what they called the “Coyote music,” except that no coyote, not even the earthly ones, would feel the need to impose such a commanding rhythm on its cries. Well, these people liked drums. For Xellos, however, the drum was a comprehensive symbol of human wrongheadedness and their insistence on applying their own standards to everyone else. Just because humans were trapped into experiencing time in herky-jerky bites, divided into heartbeats and breaths, they imagined all time was so divided and repetitious, and then they hurried to invent patterns. Days, seasons, years, fifty-year cycles, five-hundred-year gyres, the Seven Ages of Man, the Rise and Fall of Empire... every moment pinpointed among interlocking patterns... the very concept of a moment, of a … a time-thing that could be spent like a coin. So very ridiculous. Humans didn't know fewmets about time. No, Xellos was not to be seduced by drums, not even the one that rattled along in his chest. 

His Pact-thrall, though, was obedient to her childhood conditioning and well on her way to a wild night, and there was no reason not to enjoy himself vicariously. He might be able to experiment a little, even. The previous two weeks had demonstrated that he could not force her into orgasm through the bond if she were actively resisting him. But now? Would he be able to push her over the edge sooner than she could manage on her own? Would she recognize such interference, among the flood of other influences, out there in the drumming night? For that matter, would _he_ be certain of any connection between cause and effect? There were so many new variables in this situation, so much to learn. He would tell Lord Beastmaster–

He brought himself up short. He would tell Her nothing, likely as not. He would see Her again only at the moment of his death, if then. She had promised to consume his soul, to prevent anything like the grinding cycle of reincarnation that had corrupted the Chaos Dragon from claiming him. But She had otherwise dismissed him from Her service. Xellos' mental gymnastics of the last hour or so, justifying himself and his pleasures, were useless and craven, because _nobody cared._ Nobody! He had no duties, and he was not under orders. The drums beat in silence, without even an echo. In blind panic, Xellos flung himself out along the channel that connected him with Swallow trying to drown his too-human feelings in hers. _Take me away from this, little sheep!_

The drums pounded. Swallow, too, felt fear, but it was the delicious, excited fear of the boundary-crosser, the taboo-breaker. _Will this be the time I can't come back across the line?_ Insofar as Xellos could determine, Swallow was not actively engaged in coitus at the moment, but judging by the dim swirl of other lusts beyond her, it would not be long now. The Puppy, which had retreated a bit during all his existential wallowing, nosed out again, and Xellos leaned back against a rolled-up bedroll and began stroking himself. Swallow was there, out among the dancers, and so were Waterstrider, and Gall, and a few others who had sometimes wanted him, for at least a brief time. Swallow was singing _abahi,_ as the women did, and hands were reaching out of the darkness and taking hold of that round, resilient body of hers, stroking the chestnut skin... Swallow was wide open, undefended and trusting – he could reach out through the bond and touch her heart, feel it beating against his hand as his fingers moved up and down the length of his erect phallus... suppose... suppose when the time came for him to die, She did the same, his creator, suppose She did not simply make use of him from time to time, but carried him into the heart of Her own pleasure, her skin morphing at his touch from smooth to the softest of fur... suppose... her teeth would lengthen, pierce his mortal flesh. Her throat would encompass him as She took him into Herself... his hands moved faster. It was rising, the wave, it was pulling him outward, into--

NO! NO, No, nononono... The sense of wrongness pierced him like the blast of a Freeze Arrow, except that no part of himself was outside it. Breath stopped, there was pain, fear, anger... “I'm here, Swallow!” he called, and then stared uncomprehending at the dark room. What was _that?_ He had heaved himself upright. The chest was still heaving, and he had spoken aloud. The room seemed still and silent for a moment, despite the drums.

Xellos rubbed his chin. What had happened, exactly? He'd brooded himself into a fit and then tried to drug himself out of it by hitchhiking on Swallow's much more enjoyable sort of abandon. And then he'd begun to _fantasize,_ not to consider likely possibilities but to- ghk- “make a world,” as the Kesh put it – one where he and Lord Beastmaster – His mouth was full of bitter, nauseated spit from the shame of it. He swallowed with difficulty. And then, while he'd been lost in fantasy, something had said _no,_ and taken over his entire being with it. Some part of Xellos wondered if She had been expressing Her outrage at the use to which Xellos had been putting Her image. But no, She wasn't here, nor paying attention, and Xellos, all unthinking, had called out, not to Her, but to his troublesome thrall.

For that matter, what was Swallow up to? Cautiously, he closed his eyes and reached out again along the channel between them, and soon had a partial answer. Swallow was not happy. She was very, very upset. The depth and thoroughness of the unhappiness drowned such minor distinctions as the ones between fear, anger, and sorrow; they were all one rich, intoxicating, winy swirl. Well, good. Good? Yes. Good: one more ritual tying her to the valley had gone sour on her. At this rate, it might be only another year or two before she was ready to cut those ties and put herself entirely in Xellos' hands. But in this moment, strategizing was only a background to the need to act on Swallow's distress. Xellos dug blindly in the clothing chest until he found his kilt, and shuffled his feet into his sandals. Somewhere in the night there were some answers.

 

*****

The Moon was definitely winding down by the time Xellos made it out the door. The drums still played, but fewer of them, and less urgently; the musicians might simply be making “dragonfly music” to please themselves, not the last few copulators out in the Dancing Place. People were coming back up the arms of the Planting side, heading home. Three women brushed by him, naked and slightly muddy, their voluminous “moon veils” bundled unceremoniously under their arms. They made for the wash house. Two very young men, only newly “Come Inland,” at a guess, compared notes in braying voices:

“Reading Grasses might have hairy tits, but aho! She can suck you in like the Kastoha mud pools and take all your troubles away. – rrrrah!”

“Digs got to Mapleseed before I could and he took forever. How come the old men always have to show off how great they are?”

Following the thread of misery out into the night, Xellos found Swallow half collapsed on the porch of the Doctors' Lodge. Hazelnut sat nearby, done up in her Blood Clown gear. The garish stripes, to say nothing of the giant, cubit-long leather penis, sat oddly with her expression, which was concerned and rather angry. She was patting Swallow between the shoulderblades and saying, “drink your tea.” The tea in question smelled faintly of hemp.

Swallow took an obedient gulp, and then spoke as if continuing an argument. “It was, though,” she said. “Right up until the end it would have seemed ordinary to anyone who didn't know what they were feeling. I could have dealt with the other if it weren't for that.”

“Dogshit.” Hazelnut spat off the side of the porch. “They had your moon veil tied around you like a rope. That's not ordinary. Even Hempseed heard a rattlesnake, looking at you, and he isn't exactly Giver Hawk Eyes, you know. Besides, Careful was with you for more than half a season. He knew better.”

Xellos approached the porch, but made no attempt to touch Swallow. “What happened, exactly?” he asked.

Both women looked up. Hazelnut grinned at him. “So you are here, Eggplant-hair!” she chirped, “Did Swallow call you with that mind-channel-thing you say you have, or was it just that you couldn't bear a whole night away from your _giyakwunshe_ and you had to come find her?”

Xellos ignored her teasing. “What happened?” he asked again.

Hazelnut sighed. “Careful and a pack of his twisted-neck, fourthson friends decided to give Swallow a bad Moon. The wheel turned back against them faster than they expected it to, and now Swallow's pulling nettles over it.”

Swallow downed the other half of her tea in an impatient gulp and thunked the cup down on the porch, sliding it between the uprights that held the railing, where it wouldn't get kicked. “I need a walk,” she announced, springing to her feet. “Out to Lakwanwe and back, maybe.”

“Don't be stupid.” Hazelnut stood in front of her chosen-sister, arms crossed, scowling. “That tea's going to catch up with you before you get halfway there, and this is the Lion's hour. You don't want to be out on the Hunting side unless you can be mindful.” 

Swallow wilted a bit. “Maybe just around Black Sheep Meadow, then. But I need to move.”

“Better.” Hazelnut turned to Xellos. “Go with her, will you? I should really go back to the Blood Lodge and get out of all this.” She batted at the leather penis.

“Certainly.” Xellos extended a hand toward Swallow, who nodded at him but did not take the hand. She hugged Hazelnut briefly, hard, and then started up the path toward Red Beams House.

Xellos looked at her. “We can do the Lakwanwe walk if you prefer,” he offered. “Even drugged, your powers are such that you should be entirely adequate to defend yourself against anyone who'd be inclined to bother you: dog, pig, puma, or bear included.”

Swallow flinched. “I want shoes first. And Hazelnut's right – this stuff always lays me out flat, once it gets in... We'll do Black Sheep Meadow.”

Xellos shrugged and fell into step beside her. “What _did_ happen back there?” he repeated.

For a while he wondered if Swallow was going to answer at all. Her breathing was still a bit ragged, and the question brought forth a fresh spurt of misery from her. But after a while she began to speak again. 

“Under the Moon, you know, if you're a woman, dancing, you've already given your consent to any man who chooses you. People cheat a little, of course – it's not hard to slip away in the crowd if you want to – but you're not supposed to be able to say no.”

“And you ended up with a man you don't like, then?”

“No, not really. Careful and I were together for nearly a year, back before I left for Klatsaand. It was fine. And then it wasn't. Just that fast.” She was silent for another few minutes – long enough to bring them to the porch of Red Beams House and grab her shoes from just inside the door. She sat on the steps to put them on and then didn't get up again. “There were five or so of us, dancing together,” she said. “Careful and his house-brother Brook, and a couple of Red Adobe men I don't know very well, and we were brushing up against each other, here and there, and playing games with the Moon veil, like you do, and so on... I think everyone sort of agreed that Careful would take the first turn – the others started singing the Coyote music even before he put a hand between my legs... we were all excited...”

“I think I... overheard some of that,” Xellos said softly. He leaned against the porch rail, since it looked like Swallow wasn't going to head out on her walk after all.

“I could sort of tell, underneath, that Careful had some other thing going on – well, he always did; he's like that. But then once he was inside me it all turned to anger. All at once, like a boil being lanced. He was furious. And then he wasn't just angry, but angry at me- he hated me, all of a sudden. He started saying things like, 'you know I'm better than some fish-bellied no-house jackass,' and pounding away like he was a mortar in a pestle, and then the others picked it up. One of them said something about me having been away from real men too long, and Brook said, 'let's show her how to come home,' and then they were all of them pressed up against me – sticking their cocks wherever they found room, all of them angry, all of them vengeful, all around me... and then one of them – or maybe two of them – grabbed my arms so I couldn't move.”

_And that's Swallow's trigger,_ Xellos thought. Part of the ten-year old legacy of “the trouble with the Pig man,” and the first thing she warned any new lover about: _I need my arms free to move at all times._ This little story was going even better than he could have hoped. He kept his voice measured and calm, unthreatening. “What happened then?”

Swallow gazed into the middle distance. “Brook and I were able to get Careful's heart restarted after a minute or so.” She glared at Xellos' surprised giggle, but didn't try to tell him it wasn't funny. “As far as I can tell, nothing got permanently damaged.” Except, of course, a bond of trust within the community, and perhaps her own reputation. As she knew perfectly well, Xellos suspected. “Hempseed was one of the Peacekeepers tonight, and he had already been getting help when Careful went down, it seems, and then Hazelnut came over when she heard... the Peacekeepers sorted things out with the men and Hazelnut took care of me.”

To offer comfort would further increase her dependence on him, which he wanted. She would accept praise from him only with suspicion, however, and there was also the problem of not tying her closer to the valley with that comfort. And not lying. “Sounds like a difficult evening. And when you were so looking forward to it, too.”

“Yes.” Her eyes fixed on the full moon, which was starting its downward journey now. As predicted, that hemp tea was starting to have some effect as well, adding layers of ease and pleasure on top of the earlier distresses, masking rather than dispelling the underlying pain. To Xellos' empathic sense the result was a smooth bitterness, like very dark chocolate. “Salt Wind used to tell me,” she mumbled, “to look at the stars and remember how very many worlds there are, when my troubles seemed large.”

There were things Xellos wanted to tell her, but they would have to wait until the neurotransmitter flood subsided and her physical body regained some equilibrium. Cursed human meat-jelly brains; the more they needed to process calmly, the harder it was for them to do so. He held out a hand. “Still want to take that walk?”

 

*****

 

As one might predict, the confrontation between Careful and co. and Swallow made the very top item in the morning gossip of Chulkumas. It exceeded even the joys of exaggerating the number of Peacekeepers who had been needed to wrestle Betebbes into the Blue Clay storage barn when she got rowdy. Hazelnut followed Swallow back from the horse-barn with the latest load of rumor, hot and steaming, and Hempseed dropped by around breakfast-time to make sure Swallow was all right. The three of them and Xellos trooped out to the gardens to dig and weed, and they ran across Gall and Shining (and Pumpkin, who left muddy handprints on everyone's trouser legs as she pulled herself upright, over and over again.) 

The latest development, it seemed, was that Waterstrider had put Careful's shoes on the landing and sent him back home to his mothers' household. This was not, as one might suppose, a reaction to his behavior at the Moon, but the cause of it: the reversal had taken place the previous evening. Careful had come up from singing in the Obsidian heyimas to have supper before dancing, to find all his things waiting for him outside the door of Fireweed Blooms by the Corner House. In a move of such classic humanity that Xellos half wanted to applaud, Waterstrider had told her _haibi_ that of course, he must dance the Moon if he wanted to, and then been hurt and angry that he wanted to. Careful could, possibly, have gone abject at that point and won her back (someone in Chulkumas had this exact fight every Moon, it seemed – the steps in the dance were well-known to the spectators.) Instead, he had decided that if dancing the Moon was going to cost him so much, he was, by the City of Man, going to dance the Moon and get what he could out of it. And so he had come angry to the Dancing Place.

“I was a secondary target, then,” Swallow said with evident relief. “It's not like he and Brook and everyone got together beforehand and decided to put the Finder in her place.”

This was not untrue. Someday, though, Swallow would face an enemy that could match her – or outmatch her – magically, and she couldn't think like this when she did. “Planned or not, he meant you harm,” Xellos told her sternly. “I don't think you should spend very much energy trying to excuse him or forgive him. And conscious or not, I don't think that hatred has gone away.”

“Indeed. What he said. Twice,” Hazelnut agreed gravely.

“It's not like I'm thinking of taking him back in my bed!” Swallow objected, “What good does it do for me step on his wheel and return his hatred?”

“What good does it do you to feel guilty when you protect yourself?”

Swallow blinked on escaping tears. “I was every bit as out of control as he was by the end. If I'd headbutted somebody, I wouldn't feel guilty. Instead I stopped his heart.”

Hazelnut looked extremely dubious at this; Xellos was not really sure Swallow's chosen-sister believed in Swallow's new powers. Well, that could be a wedge, too.

“You were not out of control,” he said flatly.

Swallow clenched her hand around her trowel. “I was! I --”

“What you did was reversible, and you did, in fact, reverse it. Had you been truly out of control, you would have vaporized the brains of all four of your attackers, and possibly a few other people nearby. ” The way Swallow combined her medical knowledge with her magic was a deep source of delight for Xellos. Not so much in the way she used it herself as in the way it would change the game inside the Barrier. The Princess Amelia and her chimera had both been much enamored of the medical knowledge on the Omorn penninsula – cellular and systems theory, especially. The involved precision was a new thing inside the Barrier Lands, where healing consisted of herbery and the invocation of benevolent powers. But once the idea spread, it would take no time at all for someone to take that same theory and weaponize it.

Hempseed was starting to see the implications already. He straightened up from the carrot patch, which he'd been thinning. “Whoa, Swallow – you could really do something like that? Holy buzzards!”

“I have done it,” she said, “but not by mistake. It would be like scooping up mud in Claybeds Creek and accidentally making a water jug.”

_Liar,_ thought Xellos, and he smiled. “Not that difficult, surely. It's almost always simpler to break something than to make it.” Mazoku teachings, such as they were, called the process “the world consenting to its own destruction.” The Lost Cities had had a word for it: entropy.

Swallow, like Xellos, could surely feel the rising unease among her friends, and she took steps to assuage it. “Anyway, that's why I'm not sure about dancing any of the Following Nights,” she said. “If it was just about me, I'd do it – 'get back on the horse,' you know. As it is... I want to talk to Following Puma or someone first, at least.”

“So much talking...” Xellos muttered. But it hardly mattered. The story of Swallow's destructive powers would spread from last night's work – were, no doubt, already spreading. And while some people would be willing to give her credit for trying to handle them responsibly, others would be frightened. The cracks would grow. And the day would come when Swallow could trust nothing but her own power.

 

******

 

In the event, Swallow did dance one or two of the Following Nights. She reported the advice from the heyimas as, “Who do you think you are, to be so afraid of?” Besides, the later nights were of a different order than the First Night: less intense – music lasting only an hour or two, fewer dancers, and more of them from other towns, and so fewer undercurrents. In a way, they were freer and more licentious than the big opening orgy. 

“Maybe you'll get lucky and pair off with that glassblower you like so much,” Xellos suggested, “the one you start smiling at whenever you're in the Madrone Lodge library at the same time.”

“Sandburn?” Swallow turned deep red, quite abruptly. “He's my house-brother!”

“Well, there's that I suppose... but have you noticed, with your new eye for other people's desire, just how many house-siblings would pair off if they had an opportunity?” As far as Xellos could see, “incest” between people who were related by House but not Household was the most glamorous sin available in the Valley. It resembled adultery in the Barrier Lands – to be caught at it was certain ruin and exile, but still the library was full of tales of people for whom the lure had been too strong, and there was always the chance, remote but real, that you might _not_ get caught...

“Not Sandburn.” Swallow said firmly, wrapping her Moon veil about her and heading out the door.

That evening, Xellos' experiments with long-distance manipulation along the bond seemed much more fruitful. Or at least more enjoyable. Even Swallow's delight at her own pleasure seemed bearable – an extra bit of spice to the dish. She came back full of stories. “Peregrine came up and danced with me, bless him – just dancing. And there were a couple of fellows from over there in Telina-na … they had found a book somewhere, or something on the exchange, and they had all these crazy elaborate positions they wanted to try...” Swallow made legs of her index and middle fingers and demonstrated. “It was a good night.”

“Even without Sandburn.”

Swallow couldn't even be bothered to be irritated. She tweaked Xellos' nose. “What is it about you and Sandburn, anyway? He's not the only valley man I like, after all. Did you want him for yourself?”

Xellos stroked his chin and pretended to consider this. “I could be persuaded,” he said judiciously. “And of course, he's not _my_ house-brother. Perhaps I'll seduce him one of these days and you can … listen in, as it were.”

“Sandburn's not a ginkgo,” Swallow said. She'd turned away to plop her moon veil into the sink to soak. It had had several intimate encounters with the ground, it seemed.

Xellos shrugged, smiling. “So it might take a few months. Want me to get started?”

Swallow's response nearly made him laugh aloud. She snorted with laughter at his absurdity, but then heated. “I think...” she said, sounding a little wobbly, “I think that idea had better stay in Puma's house. But I think I'll go there quite a bit to visit.”

“Very well.” Xellos stretched, lazily, watching from half-closed eyes. What a productive week this had been, after all. And in another four days the Moon would be over, and he would be able to employ more of his established methods for keeping a hold on his thrall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Swallow participates in a Kesh religious rite which includes an orgy. She partners with her ex, Careful, with some of his friends watching, and the encounter turns angry and ugly. (Swallow maintains that a non-empath would have been fine. Hazelnut disagrees.) In reaction, Swallow lashes out magically and temporarily stops Careful's heart.


	16. Fire Season

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra thanks to my beloved Lysdexic Luddite for beta work on this chapter in particular; the action scene is much, much better.

The weather continued to warm. The milkweed bloomed and the butterflies appeared. The grasses began turning yellow. Hazelnut and Swallow told each other things about plans for the Summer wakwa, which was Serpentine's purview as the Moon had been Obsidian's. Xellos gathered that the Summer was arranged to be the most rewarding to adolescents; they were the ones who traveled between the towns and participated in the games. There would be other dances and ceremonies, but the games were the main thing, and Swallow was just old enough to miss them. “I went among the towns as a Summer rider before I started going out with the Finders,” she reminisced to Xellos, “I didn't really have the arms for _vetoulou,_ but my horse and I were unbeatable at the obstacle races. Pied River, her name was- she was Fefinum's dam.”

Consigned now to the sidelines, Swallow dithered about whether Fefinum should go out with the Train and brooded about being too poor to give much to the celebrations, though to Xellos' eye she seemed to do quite a bit; they were always making a tray of dolmas or a kettle of soup to feed somebody coming through – if not the athletes than the troupes of actors and musicians who also toured in the start of the dry season, or, of course, other Finders. And while she could not join in the thrill-games any longer ( _vetloulou_ turned out to be a species of polo, though the scoring was more like croquet), she could sing the two-quail song, and she dragged Xellos through the rules for a net-and-racquets game called, as she was, Swallow. It took him a while to adjust himself to a game where the people on the other side of the net were partners, not opponents, but once he did he found he could play as often and with as many partners as he wished; he had, as Kemel said approvingly, “the eye,” and devils knew he had the reach. And it gave him a private source of amusement, too. His thrall; was she named for a bird, or for a shuttlecock?

Work in the early Summer was mostly hunting and gathering, though there was always something to do in the fields, and some of the earliest berries and vegetables were beginning to ripen in the gardens. A few intrepid souls made pickles and other preserves, but most of the extra harvest was salted, set up in stacked racks on the “hot” porches and balconies – the ones that faced southwest – and dried. Pickling, after all, involved standing over pots of boiling water and considerable expertise, while “guarding the drying racks from mice” was a euphemism for taking a day off. There was a townwide cleaning and sorting going on, too, as people made ready to host the travelers or to pack up the households and decamp to the summerhouses when the heat really got going in a few weeks. The “fifth angle” was piled unusually high with unwanted items in all five heyimas. Amidst all this tidy excitement, Xellos continued to do various odd jobs, learned humiliating things about sunburn (Swallow was able to fly clear to Ama Kulkun and back, fueled by the resulting misery) and read his way through the Madrone Lodge library, but he was growing bored. He was largely shut out of the higher-level politics that had been his daily lot under Lord Beastmaster, there was only so much badgering Swallow he could do without being counterproductive, and it wasn't as though he had a settled career in one or more of the Arts or Lodges, as most Kesh adults did. 

“Why not?” Swallow asked him when he complained, startling him, “What's stopping you?”

Which was, Xellos realized, a very good question that perhaps he had best not try to answer. But if he meant to learn from his time as a human, there was certainly no need for Swallow and her circle to be his only teachers. He considered his options. The Cloth, Wood, Smith, Glass, and Potters' arts, and the Oak Society, all dedicated to making and mending, did not appeal. The Tanners were disgusting. The Doctors were right out. That still left a number of possibilities. 

He chose the Water Art, not quite at random, though his reasons were nearly as shapeless as the element itself. He had an entree into the favor of the experts in the field, with his knowledge of the wick irrigation technique they used out in the Desert of Destruction, but as an arena of study, most of it was genuinely new to him, and absorbing. He even had a degree of interest in the ritual aspects of the work. Since his Pact-thrall said her power felt like water, it might help his work with her to study it. Then, too, as keepers of reservoirs and sewage-works (these latter were mostly noisome ponds, set about with thirsty and inedible plants that would filter the sludge before it made its way back into the river), the Water Art spent much of its time working with elements that the Valley as a whole might prefer to ignore. Certainly, there was something to be said for that, for a man in his position. (So long as he was careful not to let himself think, “raw garbage.”) If one took the entire responsibility of the Water Art, from reservoir to outflow, into account, the connections and complexity easily matched the most labyrinthine of Royal Courts. Xellos felt a silly and irrelevant pride in his growing understanding. There were other practical advantages to the Water Art as well. Now that he was stuck in one time and place and could no longer scry nor make himself invisible at need, he had to find other ways to insinuate himself into the places where secrets were, and plumbers went everywhere. 

And beyond even this, he discovered, the Water Art had more to teach him: something to do with the nature of living “inside the world,” as the Kesh put it; interacting with the physical plane as if it were real. These lessons were as hard to describe in words as the parallel ones Swallow was learning about living partially in the astral plane – what was there to say, except that water was wet, and absorbent, and flowed downhill? Yet even after more than half a year in a physical body, learning with the Water Art somehow brought knowledge home that he had accepted only grudgingly and provisionally before. 

The labor of the fields and the housekeeping was often so dull his mind went elsewhere entirely, but the Water Art required concentration. The aristocrats of the Barrier Lands would have dismissed this as “manual labor.” The Kesh, contrary people that they were, taught that “the handmind” offered the deepest available wisdom. The work instilled a gradual and terrible coherence to the giddy dance of atoms; a weight to the heavy things, a solidity to the hard ones. The human body knew with astounding and dangerous completeness that real things were real, and the body was real too, even as the mazoku mind knew it was a crime that this was so. All the same, Xellos kept at the work; was drawn to it even as it frightened him. 

It was, he supposed, no more than he was asking of Swallow, after all. 

Swallow certainly noticed something about the effect his new occupation was having on him – she could hardly miss the emotional roil – but said very little about it. She knew he knew she knew, after all, and what else was there to say? The Kesh proverb for these situations was, “pass lightly over heavy ground.” Uncomfortable topics were treated with all the care warranted by the fact that even in a larger town like Chulkumas, you were going to need to ask your worst enemy for a favor eventually. Having no useful words, Swallow tried to offer other kinds of comfort; passing on gossip, initiating sex – or at least foreplay – when she wasn't really quite in the mood herself, inviting people over, making a show of trying to understand her magic lessons. Xellos appreciated the effort, he supposed, but he was not comforted. Perhaps when the town moved into the Summerhouses, he could do more with her; they would be that much more isolated, then... But Summer took a different form, in the end. 

The first inklings were gatherings of Finders that lasted longer than usual and looked more serious. Then the knots of discussion untangled and moved into the heyimas, and then the Common Place and the houses. The word “exchange” popped up more often than usual. Swallow bit her lip and kept her head down. It was Garlic who explained the matter to Xellos.

“Halfway between the Summer and the Water,” he said, “The wildfires usually start up. We'll start having people up on the Fire Tower there” – he pointed to an impressive brick structure that was, on a normal day, primarily a storage venue and a spot for courting couples to find a little privacy – “all day and night, in shifts, looking for trouble. Now, in a normal year, they'd have someone in Wakwaha talking to the Exchange, too, and keeping an eye on the big fires and the wind, so if it all goes to the buzzards we can get out in time. But this year, of course, the Exchange isn't there. Well, we'll still have the tower watchers but that doesn't give us nearly the same warning.”

Swallow looked up and joined in, the better to move discussion away from the Exchange. “So the Yanyan People, in the next valley over to ours, they were suggesting that we all get together, them and us, and make firebreaks out beyond the summerhouses: cut down the smaller trees and the low branches of the big ones, do some controlled burns to get rid of the dry weeds and the understory, in wide ribbons across the wilderness, so the fires are less likely to jump over into the parts that we and they use heavily.”

“Ah.” Xellos nodded and stroked his chin. “That would be a significant commitment.”

“Oh, yes. We'd need to send people from the Wood Art, the Finders, and the Bay Laurel Lodge at the very least – and feed them all – probably some of the Hunters would come too, since controlled burns mean the game will be fleeing – And along with that, the idea feels like bringing the Planting Lodge to the Hunting side- making the wilderness less wild. And then, how do we decide we're done? What do we do next year? And the year after that?”

“Indeed.” Xellos smiled. “And where does the Swallow land, in this debate?”

She threw her hands up, laughing ruefully. “On the bridge. I don't know two chia seeds about that kind of forestry; how do I know whether the work should be done or not? Even so, though, I can't help seeing how much I would love that work.” She used the word baho, meaning, to take delight in. “There'd be a place for the Four-house stuff, destruction included; a chance to work with the Yanyan people, work enough for Fefinum to come along – and you. That is, if you think you'd be willing to come along?” A sharper sprig of doubt poked out of the hedge of her uncertainty. “I don't know what-all the Water Art has going on right now?”

Xellos bowed slightly. “I am entirely at your disposal. You may stay in town or move into the hills or take off and set up shop in Clear Lake or Sed, and I will be happy to accompany you.”

Swallow knitted her eyebrows a little at this, but said nothing directly. “Well, it may not happen anyway.”

 

******

 

It did happen, though. Xellos had been quite certain it would; powerful mages attracted coincidence. The fate of the world rode on the Inverse's shoulders as often as it did in part because she had the power to do something about it. Fate responded to will, though not in the simple ways people like Prince Philionel liked to think it did. Swallow had been keeping her powers bridled and hobbled for so long that the Astral flow would have shifted far more intractable obstacles than a few thoughts in the head of Burl of the Yellow Adobe to give her an opportunity to cut loose. It was hardly any time at all before Xellos, Swallow, Worry, and Fefinum found themselves amongst a pack of mostly young people from all up and down the valley, making their way singing (in Swallow's and sometimes Worry's case) up into the chaparral on the “wrong” side of Ama Kulkun to spend a half moon or a month destroying things, working their way into the redwoods on the rainy side of the hills.

Swallow was in her element; Xellos could appreciate the sheer energy of her ubiquitous work in the firebreak crew, even if the effects were a little nauseating. Swallow was absolutely everywhere: easing the way between leaders of the Kesh and Yanyan, soothing the wounded egos of those who were on camp duty rather than out being glamorous in the bush, temporarily numbing the nerves of a young idiot who'd gotten careless while limbing a cedar, slid down the trunk, and filled their whole side full of splinters, and that was just the things everyone saw. Only Swallow and Xellos were aware of the source of the “lucky” and unseasonably cool wind that blew smoke from the burns away from settled country, that always seemed to die down or shift just before the backfires got out of hand and spread too far. No one else seemed to notice how thoroughly macerated the litter the cutting crews left in their wake was – as if it had had a year to mulch rather than being newly sifted to the ground; it would smolder, not go up in a flash. Swallow returned to camp each night tired and happy as horseradish, gobbled up as much food as the hungriest of the Bay Laurel Boys, and slept like a buried toad. Xellos was half tempted to take his hat and shirt off and give her another sunburn's worth of power to play with. Now that she'd had a taste of real freedom in her magic, maybe she'd really start feeling how small the Na valley was, and be ready to move onward.

The gossip mills in Chulkumas and Tachas Touchas ground finely, it seemed, but not for export, because despite Swallow’s chatty presence Xellos had to explain to most of the camp, Kesh and Yanyan too, that no, he was not a Falares Islander, and no, he and Swallow were not married yet. By day he worked quietly wherever he was assigned – usually with the crew from the Wood Art, who wanted Fefinum and tolerated Xellos if he didn't get ideas above his station, which was also Fefinum's attitude. Most days, his job was stacking the salvageable pieces of cut wood into wains for hauling. On a day that Fefinum and the other beasts were taking the load back into town – Xellos wasn't sure which town – he took Worry and decided to do a little hunting. 

Worry had become much more disciplined about his enthusiasms under Xellos' tutelage, but Xellos still made the dog stay back when he spotted a wild rabbit burrow near a manzanita grove. Xellos scouted about and set a snare at each entrance he could find save one and then called Worry. “Get 'em, Worry! Dig them out!” In an ecstasy of barking and scrabbling, Worry set himself to excavating the remaining rabbit hole and working himself down the tunnel as far as he could, which was not all that far, but was enough to frighten at least some of the inhabitants out of their bolthole and into Xellos' snares. He walked briskly about, collecting his victims, dispatching the one that had been caught by the leg with a well-placed stomp of his booted foot. “Your deaths are much appreciated,” he said aloud, “for both nutritional and entertainment reasons.” As he understood it, the Kesh insistence on singing to one's prey honored the same relationship, but Xellos was not a singer.

Xellos pulled Worry out of the much enlarged rabbit hole by the hind legs and, after making him do a couple of tricks, let him eat the entrails from the rabbits while he skinned his catch and stretched the hides. Perhaps the next thing to do would be to investigate the manzanita grove and see if any of the berries were ripe yet; it was early, but not that early... He heard a sudden hiss and went still. This was rattlesnake country. Worry yelped and bounded away – not, Xellos noted, in a direction that would allow him to fetch help. So much for loyalty. Or maybe it was intelligence that was lacking.

_“Ssso. Xellossss.”_

That was not a rattlesnake.

In fact, once the lesser mazoku emerged fully, its physical projection resembled a giant lizard. Two feet high or so at the shoulders, six feet long, with orange and blue pebbled skin. More flexible than an actual lizard of that size would have been, to say nothing of the striped doublet and pantaloons, or the elaborate jeweled ruff it wore on its neck. Or the floating, of course. It grinned at Xellos from midair. “And who's the pissant twerp now, ex-Beastmaster?”

No doubt Xellos' now-human emotions were a feast for the gloating creature – animal terror, mixed with shame for being at the nonexistent mercy of a being so far below his own former rank. Where's Swallow? She, too, must have felt it when his fear spiked so suddenly. Would she take cover like a sensible person, or come running to his rescue? _One guess._ He only hoped she was up for this. In the meantime, stall.

Xellos stretched his mouth creakily into something resembling his usual smile. “I'm terribly sorry,” he told the lizard in his politest voice, “but I'm having some difficulty placing you. Obviously we've never come into direct conflict before, because you are, after all, still alive...” Was Swallow coming closer? His physical sense of where she was had diminished somewhat over the last few months- perhaps because they were so rarely far enough from each other to strain the bond between them. _If she's coming, I hope it turns out that she can indeed feed off all mazoku, not just me._ He returned his focus to the task of making this belligerent lizard even angrier, without allowing it to start tearing him to pieces. Even if its fury turned out to be useless to Swallow, it would make the creature stupider.

“In fact,” he continued in the same mock-helpful tone, as the lizard took on a purplish hue and the ruff rose from his shoulders like a crest, “I doubt we've directly conversed, since you appear to be misquoting me. I have never called anyone a 'pissant twerp.' A 'pitiful nobody,' yes, or an 'unimportant weakling,' but not a 'twerp' of any stripe. That sounds more like something one of Gaav's people would say, but Gaav's people wouldn't have any reason to come clear out here. Besides, he came out of our last encounter rather better off than I did, and probably doesn't need revenge, although he didn't stay out of trouble for long...” _Please, Swallow, hurry!_ “I suppose you could be one of Dolphin's, especially if she was using the Exchanges and is unhappy with the fall of the City of Mind, but you've taken the shape of a desert creature. And aesthetics are usually very important to Dolphin. So, I'm rather at a loss as to whose you are.” Xellos spread his hands apologetically and prepared to dodge.

*******

“....should be getting a bigger share of that wood,” Burl grumbled to Swallow. “The Yanyan are already getting all that cedar bark they like to make felt out of; doesn't that count?” 

Swallow untangled a bee from her hair, which was coming loose from its tie again. “That's not how the contract was spoken; the firebreak was a Yanyan idea, and they're giving more food to the project than the nine towns are. Remember, some of that cedar is going toward making that smoked salmon you like so much.”

“Even so,” Burl objected, “If we went just one limb higher on any of the trees more than a cubit across, that would reduce the danger of a fire laddering up and it would give us --”

“Your husband warned Peregrine and me that you were going to get greedy once you smelled fresh-cut redwood,” Swallow said. “And he told us to remind you that the barn up by the hops vineyards is coming down this dry season, and the Wood art will be getting plenty of salvage.”

Burl chuckled. “Curse the man, he's right! But I still think--”

Swallow felt a sharp tug that seemed to touch her whole body at once. She straightened abruptly. “I have to go,” she announced bluntly, and took off running toward the edge of the woods, into the chaparral.

******

Xellos, when she found him, was dodging around in the manzanita thicket called Bifido, trying to avoid streaks of something like black lightning that came from a human-sized and outlandishly dressed gila monster. Swallow goggled, briefly. That thing wasn't even a creature of Puma's house. You needed mushrooms, not just nightmares, to invent something like that. Unfazed, Coyote's Son was still spouting diplomatic persiflage, somewhat breathlessly, as he scooted. “I think it only fair to warn you, Tabes-san,” he panted, twisting his way through the trunks and ducking under low branches, “that Lord Beastmaster promised me she would personally consume my soul- _hff_ \- when I die. In other words-” he executed a tumbling roll away from the place where a strike from the creature he called “Tabesan” had withered a sapling manzanita to black ash, “to kill me is to summon Her. And there's no saying-” He bounced sideways- “what she will do in that case.”

Swallow was able to intercept the next bolt with a clumsy, panicked one of her own. Xellos managed to work a slight bow to her into his maneuvers. “Ah, there you are, _binyez!_ I'm afraid we're going to have to kill this one; even if we succeeded in scaring him away, leaving him alive would give an entirely wrong impression to any more powerful mazoku who noticed.”

Swallow ignored the words completely, just as Coyote's Son was ignoring the innocent bystanders in this fracas. “Stop endangering the manzanitas!” She yelled. Both of the other combatants blinked at her in mutual confusion. Swallow rushed toward the uncanny lizard, trying to chivy him back into the scrub oak. “Leave them alone!” she repeated, “If you're going to murder trees, make it the scrub oak or the lilac.” She called up a wind, shoving Tabesan backward nearly fifty yards and leaving her feeling breathless herself.

Xellos' eternal smile twisted in brief, genuine amusement, but he obediently scurried away from Bifido and into the chaparral. “See if you can pull from him, _binyez,”_ he advised, and then dove into the scrub again.

Swallow found his command as confusing as he had hers, but after a moment she realized he meant the gila's emotions. Once she attended, she found she could detect them as easily as anyone's, but not make use of them. Like human emotions, they might have been made of light, or wind; nothing to grab hold of, nothing to use. Even if they had been the watery currents she was used to from Coyote's Son there wasn't much there that would have been worth grabbing. The gila's dislike of her _giyakwunshe_ and its fury at not having caught its quarry were both entirely secondary to self-satisfaction and excitement. That made Coyote's son the only well she had to draw on for this fight, and Tabesan, too, was drawing from it. _Luckily, it's topped up, that well._

Tabesan was snatching those cool, fast-burning sparks of fear away from both of them now, to fashion its black bolts. Swallow tried another set of counter-bolts, but she was new at this, and fashioning lightning drained her own powers, not just Xellos'. Shields were even more expensive. The lizard noticed suddenly that only one of its targets was making itself hard to hit and aimed at Swallow. She was able to bounce the first one back to singe its ruff, but the second one would have landed in her heart had she not jumped sideways.

She stumbled a couple of more steps and ran up against Xellos, who caught her expertly and put a steadying hand under her elbow. “I see you've finally noticed Swallow,” he chirped at Tabesan, “We have a Pact, of sorts. Your attacks are teaching her all manner of useful skills!”

Tabesan hissed and his pleated ruff rose further off its shoulders. Xellos pulled Swallow tight against him and murmured in her ear. “We're joined in the Ninth House, _binyez._ Follow the bond back there.” He reached across her to grasp her right hand with his left.

Later, Swallow would be surprised that it worked, but there was no emotion in the Ninth House. No time, no decisions. Only clarity. She was able to stay there only an instant- less even than the first time, when Coyote's people had pulled her down into their house and the winds had blown through her. But some of the clarity came down with her. Enough of it. _Those bolts aren't grounded._ Swallow steadied herself, still clutching Coyote's Son's hand, and tapped the deeper springs of his well of pain, leaving the fear-sparks to Tabesan. True lightning was a bridge between earth and sky, built from both ends at once. Tabesan was treating its bolts more like arrows, flung from one place to another. Swallow stopped trying to get between the bolts and their target and instead tried to charge the ground to gather them in.

It didn't take much. Tabesan's next bolt skewed sideways, obliterating a cluster of poison oak stems. _“Yes!”_ Xellos laughed in her ear and squeezed her in a brief, triumphant hug. The fear-sparks died down. Tabesan was going to have to dig deeper or else use its stored power. Swallow prepared another patch of scrub, threaded another grounding wire. This time the black bolt arced backward over the lizard's head and clipped its tail.

Tabesan squawked, then hissed, sticking out its dark blue tongue. “You- little-” The jewels in the ruff glowed red, and so did its eyes. With some sense other than sight, Swallow could watch its power collecting in a sphere around it, like a swarm of bees gathering on a branch. She began to prepare another grounding wire, and was interrupted by another hiss in her ear.

Xellos squeezed her elbow and whispered urgently. “If we keep things on the physical plane, it's going to wear us down. Try putting your ground _here.”_

Swallow could not have said where “here” was; somewhere in the Four Houses of the Sky, as close and as unreachable as an insect in midair four feet from the side of a bridge. “It'll take half our power just to reach it,” she warned, though surely he had to know? “And you might still burn out if what's left isn't enough.”

“Try.”

Swallow tried. The pain well was growing drier; the emotions down at the bottom of it were thick, murky and mixed. But strong. There was no time to balance the load or direct the flow with any precision. Swallow cast a shunt- or a siphon- into the very bottom of the well and pushed down from the top, aiming the end fo the siphon at the “place” Coyote's Son had indicated and hoping this would be enough. Tabesan loosed a wall of black flame. The grounding wire took root, going live in a burst of sparks, and the flame suddenly pulled itself inward to the wire with a whoosh, taking the lizard with it into nothing.

Xellos let go of Swallow's hand, but kept his arm around her, pulling her against him so that his laughter shook them both. “Well done,” he crowed, “very well done indeed! That was beautiful.” He laughed harder.

Swallow drooped into his embrace for a moment and then pulled away to return to the grove Bifido, flopping down into a crackly drift of fallen manzanita leaves. The man had every reason be giddy, she supposed, having just had every negative emotion he possessed wrested away and converted into arcane lightning. But his glee, at the moment, made her feel even more tired. _He's been around long enough to remember the Cities of Man, there under the Inland Sea. Why is it, then, that he makes me feel so old?_

She made a curve of her thumb and forefinger and pressed it against her eyes, evoking a brief, cool, darkness, and then pressed harder, until she sawflickering black-on-black patterns that reminded her somehow of the four-house place where she had built that last grounding wire. The manzanita leaves crackled again, and Swallow looked up to see Coyote's Son beside her again, still smiling. “So,” he said, “where did all that power come from? I didn't think I was afraid enough to let you do all that.”

“You weren't,” Swallow agreed wearily, “The power came mostly from hatred.” It had clung like pine sap, that hatred, and smelled like burning tar when she made use of it. Her nose and throat still felt raw.

“Ah.” Xellos stretched out and plucked a green manzanita berry, rolling it between his fingers. His satisfaction rolled around in his voice in a similar fashion. “So,” he said, “You _can_ draw power from the negative emotions of mazoku other than me. You're sort of an inverted mazoku, a...” he snickered, “An ukozam.” A moment or two later he got control of himself and added, “Which should make you an ally of the dragons in the great scheme of things, but somehow I doubt it actually works that way. The Goldens wouldn't likely take to the Kesh brand of pacifism any more than-”

Swallow cut him off. “Your hatred, not Tabesan's. I couldn't get a hold on its emotions at all.”

“Mine?” Xellos fluttered his hands in exaggerated confusion, masking, as far as Swallow could tell, genuine confusion. She wondered why he bothered. “But I didn't hate Tabes,” he objected. “It was hard even to be afraid of him. Too many old habits.”

Doggedly, Swallow kept on with her own truth. “Your hatred of me,” she clarified.

Xellos blinked. “Of you? Wherever did you get that idea?”

Swallow had been with him long enough to recognize a confirmation that sounded like a denial. She'd used the technique a time or two herself, back in the Finders' Lodge, when she'd had to be her own troublemaker if she'd wanted one, and wanted one more often than now.

“I don't hate you,” Coyote's Son said softly. There might have been real kindness somewhere in there; he was obviously still on his post-combat high, so it was hard to tell.

“Not right now,” Swallow replied bitterly, crumbling a defenseless manzanita leaf in irritation. “I just drained it all off killing Tabesan. But I've been watching that hatred growing for half a year now, _giyakwunshe._ I'm really not looking forward to the next crop. Or the next harvest, either. Trying to find the balance for ordinary kinds of unhappiness is bad enough.”

Coyote's Son tilted his head, diverted. “Balance? What balance do you mean?”

She snorted. “Well, I certainly don't want to drain you like this, every time! You're acting like Hempseed, at the moment, or Betebbes. Of course there's a balance! Some pain – grief, shame, even anger, is needed to grow a whole soul. But too much is crippling. And then for me, there's the matter of learning how to handle this power, and being prepared for the next big surge of it. And trying not to let you turn me into a substitute parent. Or Master. It's all dragonfly songs; making it up as I go along. And you're mostly not very helpful; maybe you can't be.”

Xellos stared at her, camas-flower eyes open wide, listening, and then collapsed into giggles again. “ _That's_ what you think you're doing? Healing me? Oh!” He snickered. “Oh, dear...”

Swallow glared. “Your head's on backward.”

“S-so you've s-said,” he wheezed, “repeatedly.” But he calmed down after that and looked at her seriously. “But I don't hate you and never did. My _situation,_ yes. That, I am not fond of. In exile, powerless, chained to a physical body...”

“I am those chains.”

He wrinkled his forehead at her.

“I am what holds you here. I am where your missing power went, and I am the vessel you poured yourself into and the shape you took. I _am_ your 'situation,' and you keep trying to change me. You don't think that's hatred, to keep trying to turn a person into someone else? As far as I'm concerned, you can either finish dying or stop sulking and move forward; it will be a great relief to me either way. I have enough unhappiness without managing yours.”

Xellos' eyes slid half-closed again, and his voice took on that soft tone he used for needling people. “And yet,” he said, “My unhappiness has gifted you with great powers. And as this afternoon's work proves, they can be very useful to have.”

“Useful to you, especially,” Swallow growled, still bitter. “If I have all the power, you can keep playing the slave, squirming and poking and prodding. You can leave me to make all the hard decisions and you can go along without choosing to, because you are a slave, or you can wriggle away, because it wasn't your idea.” She rounded on him, springing to her feet and shouting. “Grow _up!_ Make your souls! Let your navel dry out and take responsibility for your own choices. Or else put on undyed clothes and go off with the Bay Laurel boys and sing songs about penises until you get bored.” Swallow crunched away through the chaparral, fuming, leaving Xellos to giggle helplessly among the manzanitas.


	17. Doldrums

This was a day of the ninth house. Already, while the shadows were still longer than the people who cast them, the wind was dying off and the buzzards turned in the cloudless sky. Most of the town was out in the fields, getting the work done early before it got too hot to move. And as the sun climbed, almost everyone else would head upward, too: into the hills and the three-walled summerhouses, in the shade of the forests. Not Swallow, though, not today. Two days from now, maybe, they’d head into the hills. Tomorrow, she would kiss Fefinum goodbye for the season and watch Peregrine lead her away to Kastoha and the train. Today, she had letters to write.

_Dear Aihal, I hope this letter finds you well. I am sorry I could not come north with the train this year, but I wanted to tell you how pleased everyone here was with the flavor of the amaranth you sent us..._

Swallow checked the little book she kept notes in, to remind herself of the names of Aihal's family. She dipped her brush. _I will miss seeing you and Tenar and Therru; I hope you will write back to me and tell me how many races Therru won with that piebald colt of hers...._

The square, monotonous letters of Tok looked odd, handwritten on paper instead of tapped onto a screen. It was odd, too, to be writing these words to be carried slowly by mule and ox instead of flicking through the wires of the Exchange, faster than falling water. Swallow dipped her brush again and took a breath of the still, leathery air of the Madrone Lodge library. The library had writing desks by the northwest-facing windows – both better lit and less cluttered than the worktable in Red Beams House.

_I hope you enjoy the cumin seeds and the olive oil. Best wishes, Wehisho Sudrevidovmav._

Oh, but it was awkward, writing in Tok! Even her own name became a hiss and mumble of syllables... Swallow set Aihal's letter to one side to let the ink dry and started on her next one. _Dear Nantauk, I'm sorry I won't be traveling with the train this summer; you will remember I was bringing a man back home with me when we last talked, and it has gotten complicated..._

Nantauk's letter took longer, and once all three sheets of it were drying, she picked up Aihal's letter again, to roll it into a scroll, tie it with wool, and thread a pair of copper coins on the ends of the yarn; She Tries would take one of them for herself when she made sure the letter got to Sed, and the other one would go to whatever person in Sed made sure the letter went to Aihal's house.

_Dear Memer, the leather and all twelve pairs of boars' tusks arrived safely; the Tanners were very excited. I hope the honored Waylord Galva found the Ganais wine to his liking..._

This letter would go to Clear Lake, and then north to, eventually, Ansul – a five-copper string. The letters to Anitok, to Tuberhuny, to Klatsaand, would have silver coins and lampworked beads in their strings. The currents made it harder to go south, and there were the mountains to work around. Without the exchange, it could be a quarter of a year before Swallow's words got where they were going, and that was assuming everyone on the road was honest. To say nothing of the cost. But there were some obligations that must be met.

_Most honored teacher, you will be glad to know that the methods you gave me are helping many people here in the Na valley, who would otherwise need to take hemp or poppy to ease their pain..._

The news she was giving Utnand had come to her in a letter, too, from her sister Adsevin. The baby was kicking, Adsevin told her, and Agate was puffed up like a spring toad over what the Klatsaand medicine did for those who were sevai and no longer muttered about Swallow's no-good _haibi_ all the time. Adsevin thought that by the time the baby came into the Third House Agate would be over her anger and willing to let Swallow and Xellos come visit again, and if she wasn't Adsevin would insist. _Pond had heard that you aren't going out with the Train this year, but he's giving you a bunch of his beads like always. Best love, my sister..._

A woman, said the Blood Lodge teachings, was a center, as a man was a reaching-out. She knew herself; her roots went down. A man gathered things, using his outsides to define himself. Well then, Swallow was unwomanly and her household upside down, because her center might well be the least important part of her. What was the soul of a swallow? Not the tiny bundle of feathers and hollow bones, surely. Not when there was the looping dart and flash that cleared the evening air of bugs, the singing waves, northbound or southbound, that darkened the skies in the spring and fall. And just so was Swallow of the Serpentine a sister to Adsevin and Hazelnut, a mentee to Utnand of Klatsaand and Bridge and Peregrine of the Finders, the former half-wife of Tairoot, a friend to Nantauk and Hempseed and dozens of other people, even, she would argue, the ones whose names she had to write down in her notebook. Swallow was a net of relationships and stories and memories, each one as fragile as the hair-thin mycelia that linked mushrooms under the forest litter. All of them, taken together, were just as resilient. She hoped. All she could do was keep reaching out. And now she was a _giyakwunshe._ Or, something, anyway. To hear Xellos misuse the word that Swallow used for talking about her relationship with her home hills angered her. To imagine that he was not misusing it, that this was what love looked like to him… that idea frightened her to the point of nausea. 

_Dear Parth, I hope this letter finds you well..._

The men in her life, now, they were centers. Garlic no longer reached out, but inward, downward, learning how to die. One might argue (over a glass of wine, in the evening when the stars and toads were coming out, or in the smoke of the Black Adobe earth lodge in the rainy season) whether Garlic's soul was growing deeper and stronger, or simply taking itself apart like a milkweed pod, scattering memories and advice out into the four houses where they would root in other people's souls or parch, forgotten, in the still air. But what was left, wheezing over his mortar at the low table in Red Beams House, was contained in himself, smooth and simple, not a fungal web but a taproot like a carrot, with only a few fronds still tying him to anything outside. And if Garlic was inward turned more or less by accident, because he had let go of so much, than Xellos was the same deliberately, out of determined, even passionate, rejection of almost every offered link. Swallow, and the bond between them, and what she made of it, interested him greatly. Swallow's friends and family and home interested him only a little; he mostly seemed to be a bit jealous of them, working constantly and subtly – no, not subtly, really, but indirectly – to undermine her whenever she reached out in a direction he didn't want to go. More neutral presences, such as Worry, he treated with detached and ironic amusement. 

She tried not to complain to Xellos, because he could outargue her. Why should he care much about the doings of a few farmers, when he was older than the meadows they grazed their sheep on? Why shouldn't he resist the pull of Swallow's humanity as she resisted the pull of the power he gave her? But she complained to Hazelnut and her other friends when he wasn't there, and sometimes when he was. 

Her chosen-sister worried for her; Hazelnut couldn't see why Swallow didn't just kick him out. Even as Hazelnut and the rest of Chulkumas got used to the sight of Swallow using magic, she still refused to accept what Swallow told her about the constraints that came with the power. “You can't argue him out of being sick, _binyez,_ and it's dangerous to keep trying. Machines and horses, you know.” She meant the proverb. _If you don't teach machines and horses in their way to do what you want, they'll teach you in your way to do what they want._ And she wasn't wrong, Swallow thought, but what was the way to teach a mazoku? 

Xellos implied that the way to do it was to use force. “You could kill me with a thought, you know, Swallow.” 

She pulled him back by his shirt collar instead, pointing at the black widow web he'd been about to walk into. “That spider could kill you without one. Have you decided you want to die after all? There are easier ways.” 

And he'd looked at the web with exaggerated, but real, alarm, and then gone back to smirking, hovering his hand an inch or two away from his tiny nemesis. “If I can achieve my goals without dying, that would of course be preferable, but neither my life nor my comfort are my first concern. If the agony of a spider bite gives you enough power that you stop piddling about with tapeworms and do real work, all to the good. If you finally understand that you have, not just the power, but the right, to kill me, better still.” 

Swallow wanted to tear her hair out. Or better yet, his. “All right!” she threw her hands in the air, “I should be more patient with you. You're old and set in your ways, and a long way from home. But I wish you had enough courage to stop – to stop clutching so hard you can't take a gift...” 

Xellos tilted his head, lips pursed. “I don't quite know what you mean by that.” 

“Well, it's the story of Big Man and Little Man, isn't it? Little Man is afraid of everything, he has no power, he needs Big Man to protect him. So he says, 'As long as I'm Big Man's slave and want what he wants, I have Big Man's power to use.' And he serves...but if Big Man meets a Bigger Man, then Little Man is in trouble. So he wants to serve the biggest Big Man he can find.” 

“I am familiar with the phenomenon, but I don't see how it applies in this instance.”

“I have power over you.” It was the first time she'd said it out loud. 

“You do.” He was smiling again. 

“And aren't you trying to make me into a bigger Big Man? So that I can keep you safe? All this time I've been thinking of the mazokude as Coyote's people, turning things around, bringing winds and change, but you're just Little Man, trying to destroy what you're afraid of. I wish... I wish I knew how to make you see what happens when you let yourself be in danger... Or else that you could decide to finish dying and go live in Bear's house, where there is no fear.” 

Xellos had been tracking her with knitted brows, nodding now and then, though not in agreement. Once or twice his lips twitched. When Swallow finished her speech, he was silent, thinking, and then suddenly he burst into laughter; not his usual stifled giggles, but whoops and gasps, the tears running down his grinning face until he sat down and rested his head on his knees. “Thousands of years,” he wheezed, “Wars, plagues, earthquakes, floods and volcanos, the fall and rise of at least two civilizations... and California still hasn't changed at all!” 

Swallow had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn't matter; he hadn't heard what she'd been trying to say. 

The next time she felt like talking the whole thing over, Swallow went to find Gall, who was better at both listening and thinking than Hazelnut was, and discovered her on a spot by Redwood creek that had no more dignified name than “the good sitting place.” There was a cottonwood there for shade, the presence of which helped suppress the tall grasses and nettles that would otherwise crowd the shore, and a little tiny bluff, no more than knee height, that kept the packed ground under the tree from going muddy, at least in the dry season. You could see the creek flowing by, sometimes with ducks or geese floating on it, or a carp or two rolling about in the mud of the shallows. In the evenings, the spot usually played host to some trysting couple or other who were willing to brave the mosquitoes, but fewer people wanted to make the hike in the heat of the day. Gall, though, was one of them, and when Swallow told her, “My friend, I need your mind and ears, I think,” she turned an inviting hand palm up and scooted her workbag to the other side so that Swallow could have a more comfortable spot to park her bottom. Gall listened to Swallow's litany, with eyes downcast, focused on the tiny basket she was weaving out of pine needles. But Swallow could sense her attention, the busyness of the mind behind the still face. Gall, unlike Hazelnut, was not thinking, “Oh, here she goes again,” but some other thought. When Swallow wound down, Gall was silent a while longer, still thinking. Then she looked up. 

“Swallow, do you remember when you first came to Chulkumas to stay in Keepword's household, what I was like then?” 

Swallow had to grope for it. She had herself been wild with adolescence and the trauma of the Pig Man and the two-year-old grief of her father's death; for all her sociability, she had been too full of herself just then to take much notice of her friends, except for Hazelnut. But Gall had been there, inclined to silence even then, but more... vivid about it. “You were making jewelry out of mouse skulls and chicken vertebrae,” Swallow remembered, “And there was a while there where you were trying to get everyone to call you Maggot.” 

Gall nodded and looked down at her pine needles again. “Nothing much had happened to me, compared to you, but when you start to grow up, everything falls out of the Hawk's House. For little children, you know, everything that is, always has been and will be forever. And then you start to see that no, nothing will be forever; it will all die, even the earth, even the stars. Well, I saw that and I missed the certainty, and I decided that if nothing lasted except death, then I would align myself with death.” 

What all this had to do with Swallow's dilemma wasn't very clear, but then, Gall's mind often moved sideways. As Gall listened patiently, so her slow, roundabout speech was worth listening patiently to. 

“You think that's what Xellos is doing? Or maybe all the mazokude?” 

Gall sighed. “Yes – no – maybe, but that wasn't quite what I was thinking... I was just trying to figure out why your _haibi_ seems young for his age. Even you've said so; that he seems like he's making his soul, still.” 

Swallow skipped a rock across the creek. “Maybe. I've thought sometimes that maybe it's just habit; it sounds like he spent most of his time with young people, before.” 

“No, it's more than that,” Gall said, with assurance. “There's something... I almost- wait.” She held up a hand, frowned out at the creek, eyes fixed on nothing at all as her thoughts eddied around her. After a while, her hand went back down into her lap, but Gall continued to frown. Swallow got up and stretched, walked upstream to Crayfish Shoals and back. It was easier waiting for Gall, now, with her new senses telling her that Gall was still interested, still thinking, than it had been a year ago, before Swallow had gone out to Klatsaand. If she listened, she could share Gall's rising excitement as she homed in on the thought she was hunting. With that as her cue, she was able to splash back downstream again in time to hear Gall's triumphant, unvoiced, “Hah!” and see her look up and outward again, smiling as she finally netted her insight. Gall with a new thought looked like Swallow with a new bargain. 

“It all fits, doesn't it?” Gall said, watching her idea turn in her net, the glimmer of its scales, “We always talk about warriors and slaves being childish... it's not just that they're not in the habit of thinking for themselves- it's actually a crime to do so, isn't it? When all but a few people have to obey, then choice is something that has to be taken by violence, or guile. And what is a soul made of, if not choices?” 

Once Gall said it, it sounded like something Swallow had always known. “Yes!” She added her own insight: “So anything he might have to make a soul before would have been small...” Swallow smiled, tilted her head to one side, and raised a finger. “And secret.” 

Gall barked laughter, then sobered. “So if you want him to value a gift, maybe you should make him steal it.” 

“How do I do that?” 

Gall shrugged. “How would I know? You're the Finder.” 

For a moment, Swallow could almost see it – how that could be the game she and Xellos played- hiding and finding, bluffing, a dance of wits, both of them lighthearted and knowing the game for what it was. It seemed to fit him, that pattern. But could she let herself be lighthearted when it was her place in the valley that was at risk? And how much could they bluff when each knew what the other was feeling? Could Xellos even pretend to be fooled, for the sake of the game, or was that too much like the lying he so despised? 

“Maybe,” Swallow sighed. “It's something to hope for, anyway.” But for today, self-pity was stronger. “Shit a bramble-bush,” she wailed, “How in the world or out of it did I find the one man in all the nine houses who's too old for me and too young for me _both at the same time!”_

“You're special that way,” Gall told her drily, and it was Swallow's turn to laugh.

***** 

Adsevin's daughter was born late, a nineday or two before the Water, and Swallow and Xellos went down to Tachas Touchas to visit after the Wine. (Xellos rather enjoyed the Wine, in retrospect, once he got over the hangover. The festivities had been enlivened by a vivid and out-of-season meteor shower, and one of the giant puppets they called “Old Earth Snakes” turned out to be a wickedly accurate caricature of a dragon Xellos had known and personally killed some centuries ago.) The delay, according to Swallow, was calculated to give the family in Five Toads House time to deal with all the people in Tachas Touchas who would want to cook or do chores for them. Then Swallow could help out when those people had all paid homage and gone away again. This would also give little Plenty's immune system some time to catch up before exposing her to microbes from a whole twenty-five miles away. Xellos accused Swallow of funk. Swallow didn't answer directly, merely saying, “We'll stay in the heyimas. Bounce will be very glad to see us, I imagine.” 

Bounce was indeed glad to see them, two inches taller than he had been nine months ago and bursting with pride at his baby sister while at the same time relieved to have adults around who were ready to tell him that he, Bounce, was an important person even if he was a boy, and give him attention. Stag and the other Bay Laurel boys who had followed Xellos around before the Sun Wakwa seemed to have similar attitudes, and he found himself drilling them on quarterstaff work again while Swallow fussed over her new niece, who, to Xellos' eye, resembled a pale raisin the size of a cat, fitted with a klaxon. He stayed on the periphery of all that. He kept a respectful distance from Agate until invited to join the family for supper on their second night in town, and even then he found chores such as gardening that would not bring him directly into contact with his “mother-for-now.” Agate might or might not be over her grudge from their argument nearly a year ago, but if he avoided her unless specifically invited, then she would have to officially swallow her pride and invite him, which would leave him one-up and make her angrier. 

Besides, babies were dull. Xellos felt he got plenty of Plenty just listening to Swallow's stories at night in the heyimas, when she would talk to him for lack of anyone else in town who didn't already know. Plenty had acquired the nickname of “Dolma,” for her marked preference for being tightly swaddled in a blanket of soft cotton – her favorite (according to her parents, though how a non-empath could discern such a preference in a person who was only just beginning to move her head around and focus her eyes was beyond Xellos) was embroidered with a pattern of grape leaves. Bounce was taking his role of Big Brother very seriously and kept trying to give things to Plenty – or Dolma – and then getting upset when she ignored them or gummed at them. Adsevin was beginning to go back to work at the Doctors' Lodge from time to time, mostly just for an hour or two, when the baby was asleep; there were enough relatives in Aunt Mohair's household who wanted an excuse to hold a squirmy brown thing that might urinate on them that the housework was going smoothly, and little Dolma might never learn to sleep on something that didn't breathe if this kept up. She was in all respects a normal, healthy baby, except for the clubfoot Swallow had foreseen. 

Xellos had forgotten this detail – or rather, had put it out of his mind when they left Tachas Touchas last winter and took a little more time than he would want to admit to Lord Beastmaster to recall it again. But that didn't mean he wasn't going to make use of it. It was a matter of choosing his audience carefully. He needed someone excitable and inclined to dislike Swallow already, but with neither of those characteristics being so pronounced as to have other people dismiss them out of hand. He decided to try the adolescents. One afternoon after working with the Bay Laurel boys, he tagged along as they drifted back to the Planting Side of Tachas Touchas to hang out with their girlfriends, one of whom, Poppy, was discussing the perils of babysitting with Swallow's cousin Cat Watching. It took very little nudging to get Cat Watching to mention the clubfoot, and when she did, Xellos looked very grave and said, quietly, “I had forgotten that Swallow said the baby would be deformed.” 

“That's right,” Cat Watching said, a little smug, “Adsevin didn't tell anybody right at first, but after Plenty was born and people praised her for being so calm about the foot, she said something about how Swallow had had a vision. Adsevin hadn't been sure she believed it, but it sort of prepared her mind, her and Pond's.” 

“Ah,” Xellos said, nodding. “A vision. Yes, that makes more sense.” 

“More sense than what?” Cat Watching demanded. 

Xellos looked down and twisted his fingers together. “Well,” he said, “sometimes, when power comes suddenly to a person who isn't prepared for it, as happened to Swallow, it can turn their minds a little bit. Or, if they're not in control of it, the power can serve their darker selves – the part that wants to swear at the House Speaker and always take the last berry tart, and hit out at the people you don't like, you know. And if that happens, well, people used to call it the evil eye. A curse that comes of envy, or resentment. So when you reminded me that Swallow knew ahead of time that something would happen with Adsevin's baby... But it's really far more likely that she simply had a vision, as you say.” 

Cat Watching narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Swallow's cousin had not taken to Xellos on their previous acquaintance, and he suspected her of knowing something of his true nature, even if she was unwilling or unable to articulate it. Poppy, on the other hand, knew Xellos only secondhand through whatever adulatory babble Stag and Mica had poured into her ears, and besides that had reasons of her own for disapproving of Swallow and Finders in general. She listened open-mouthed. “You don't really think Swallow would do anything evil, do you? I mean, you call her _giyakwunshe_.” 

Xellos shrugged. “And will continue to do so. My soul is in her hands. However, that doesn't prevent me from having occasional... concerns... about her state of mind.” Namely, that it was usually too steady and sane to manipulate easily, but the girls certainly didn't need to know that. 

“Like what?” Cat Watching demanded. And before Xellos decided how we was going to not-answer that, she went on, “Swallow seems normal enough to me.” 

She probably is,” Xellos soothed. “I may simply be hyper-alert, jumping at sticks in rattlesnake country. It's not as though all the lambs she delivered last spring were stillborn, or anything.” 

“No,” Poppy agreed, on cue, “Just Mibi's, so far as I know. And that one wasn't mysterious; the lamb was sevai.” 

Xellos turned his head sharply, his hair swinging. “You're sure of that? You saw the lamb before it died?”

“Yes,” Poppy said, definitely, then brought herself up short. “No. I didn't; Mica did. The lamb was a breech; that’s why we had Swallow in, and she told me she was worried about sevai even before she got the lamb out, so I went down to the barns for one of the orphans but then Toyon needed me for something so Mica brought the one Eats Nettles didn't want to nurse back up.” 

“But he did see Mibi's lamb before Swallow killed it?” Xellos repeated, still urgent. 

“I... I think so...” Poppy's brows wrinkled, and Xellos' apparent fear began to infect her. 

“Would you ask him? Please?” 

“All right...” and Poppy scurried off, right then. By the time she found her brother and he told her that Mibi's lamb had already been dead by the time he'd reached the scene, Poppy would have forgotten that this was only one lamb, out of a dozen or two that Swallow had helped deliver. Would have forgotten, too, that her private unease around the Finder was not mutual, and that Swallow had no reason to act with malice against Poppy or her sheep. If Xellos was very lucky, she would go to superstitious Toyon for advice, and the panic would spread into a full-blown witch hunt. If he was less lucky... 

“That was stupid.” Cat Watching told him, flatly, “and mean.” And she left him standing there and headed into the Obsidian heyimas. Since Cat Watching was Serpentine, that meant she was heading for the Blood Lodge to tell her version of the story, not keeping it in the family. If Xellos was unlucky, some Auntly person or persons would stomp his rumors flat before they had time to kindle. If he was very unlucky, they might do so without deciding he was deliberately troublemaking, and even his backup plan – forcing a larger scale version of Agate's “him or me” ultimatum – would go unsupported. 

On the bright side, even a complete squib of an operation would leave new resentments growing on the vine; a widened gap between Swallow's family and Poppy's. Were he still Lord Beastmaster's Lieutenant, he would have made a note of these, passed the information on to lesser mazoku who might be in need of a thrall or a meal, whom he owed a favor or whom he wanted to owe him one. Now, of course, he lacked the leverage. Also, he lacked the connections; only one of his lesser brethren had come through the valley since Tabes, and that one had been so pathetically low-grade it had attempted to possess Worry, and gotten itself killed by the dog's burst of ecstasy at the smell of lamb stew cooking. And most of all, he lacked the time. He had fifty or sixty years, at most. That was barely enough time to get a messianic movement going – probably the wisest use of a goodhearted thrall – and even that was more likely to fizzle out than not if he couldn't bring in a few more allies to the project. The oppressed and downtrodden of the Na valley were neither numerous nor organized enough to be much use in that regard. If he wanted to make a devi or a martyr out of Swallow, he needed to get her somewhere else: find somewhere civilized enough to make her angry, bring out her leadership abilities, start a crusade... _fifty or sixty years_... Xellos hoped fervently for a witch hunt. 

******

He didn't quite get one. Or, at least, not soon enough to do any good. He'd been correcting Stag's hand position on his quarterstaff, taking a complicated set of moves slowly, when he spotted a group of several people come boiling out of one household and down the row toward Five Toads. “I'd better see what that's about,” he said, taking his leave. 

By the time he got there, the trouble had come out to the Common Place, with Agate's household and some portion of Mohair's, and they were squaring off against a largely Obsidian group, including Toyon and Poppy. Agate stood in front, with her daughters flanking her, looking, in Adsevin's case, angry, and in Swallow's, angry and frightened both. Assorted cousins and aunts hovered in the margins, listening eagerly. Pond dithered in the doorway of Five Toads House. He was Obsidian, too, Xellos recalled abruptly, and must be feeling some divided loyalties. 

“….Can't tell a coral snake from a king!” Toyon was saying, shaking her fist. 

Agate folded her arms and looked down her nose. “Adsevin,” she said, while still looking at Toyon, “How many dead lambs did you deliver last spring? 

“That was ages ago!” Adsevin protested. “Maybe five or six?” 

“And how many for you, Toyon?” 

The older woman frowned a little. “Three, but...” 

“But nothing,” Agate declared. “Toyon, my husband's cousin, you are a fine Speaker for the Obsidian. When I see you in a household where I have come as a doctor, I know my patient and their family will be well-cared for. The town flocks are healthy and so are their pastures. But you have beliefs like a cave has bats.”

“But...”

“Listen,” Adsevin said gently, silencing her mother with a tap on the shoulder. “I would like to talk about what Swallow told me last year. When Plenty came into my womb, that was the sixth time I have been pregnant. There was one five-nineday miscarriage before Bounce, and one after, and then poor Silence, born at five months with no mouth, and then a ten-nineday miscarriage... I had come to believe my womb must be poisoned. When Swallow had her vision, I heard her say my daughter would have no toes on one foot, but I also heard her say she would be healthy. And that vision became the treasure of my days. If my daughter had to pay a few toes to come into the third house to me, I am glad she decided it was worth it.” 

Swallow's eyes filled with tears – she turned to her sister and embraced her, briefly. Adsevin patted her back. 

But Toyon was not wholly mollified. “You've turned your eyes away from what your daughter has become for too long, Agate. Even her husband is worried about her, and you do nothing.” 

“ _Haibi,_ not husband,” Swallow and Agate corrected simultaneously. Agate looked sideways at her daughter. “And just because I don't say anything doesn't mean I can't see,” she said. “I might think if I warn her, she'll dig in her heels, for instance.” And Swallow did indeed look mulish. 

Adsevin looked at Xellos; he thought she might be the first person of them all to notice that he was there. “Are you worried about her, Aspen?” 

Xellos stroked his chin. This was going to be tricky. “As I said to Poppy earlier,” he began, “there are certain dangers inherent to Swallow's circumstances that I am, perhaps, unduly alert to. I have seen how the powers that have come to her can change a person, the hurt they can do. Burned by a hot stove, shy of a cold one, as they say. I have no evidence that Swallow has actually done anything that need cause you concern on that front,” _alas,_ “but I am not certain that the Valley would notice in time.” 

“You said she maybe did it by accident!” Toyon accused. 

“I said that such a thing was possible, if the power is not controlled. Theoretically speaking, Swallow is now capable of leveling most of Tachas Touchas, with some effort. Whether she is at all inclined to do so is another question entirely.” 

“Well, and we could say the same thing about Grandmother Mountain, couldn't we?” Adsevin gestured north toward Wakwaha and the volcano it sat on. 

Toyon glared. 

“Giver Toyon,” Swallow stepped forward. “Maybe you can help me.” 

The older woman blinked. Most of her entourage did, too. “What?” 

Maybe you can tell me what more I should be doing.” Swallow clutched her hands, earnestly, eyebrows drawn together in a plea, not sarcastic. “I learn with the Serpentine scholars in Chulkumas, and with the Doctors, but they don't do much that comes over into the Five Houses. I learn with Xellos, but his head's on backward. I could leave the valley and not come back, but that would make me weaker, and a weak person with power is more dangerous than a strong one. 

“Well.” Toyon deflated. “Well.” 

“Finder's Lies,” spat Poppy. “Even if you mean it, you don't.” One of the older women called her name, sharply, and she subsided, still glowering. 

Swallow took a deep breath and let it out. “We're going back to Chulkumas in another day or two. Will that be enough for you to be easy?” 

The Obsidian crowd muttered to itself. They were unpracticed at being a mob. One or two of the ones at the edge drifted away. Swallow and Xellos both looked abruptly at Adsevin, alerted by a spike of determination. “I'll go with you,” Adsevin announced. 

Agate and Pond squawked alarm. Bounce, who had wormed his way into the audience at some point, gasped. “Mama?” 

"You need a bringing-in, Swallow-binyez. And I need to be there, and so does your Chulkumas family. So I'll walk up with you and get it put together.” 

Swallow's face went slack. She looked a little dizzy. “And the baby?” 

Adsevin grinned. “Plenty weighs less than your rucksack. She'll never be easier to travel with than now, will she?” She looked around the assembled crowd. “Bounce will get some extra time with his Tata and Grandmother, Pond will get some extra sleep... it'll be good for everyone.” 

Nobody said much, but a wave of contentment spread itself across the little crowd. This, said the collective valley judgment, was fitting. Swallow was Agate's family's problem, and was being attended to. Adsevin, as a mother and a Doctor, was taking an appropriate amount of leadership, and Swallow, as a childless Finder, was submitting. No one was being unmindful, or malicious. Adsevin went to Bounce and knelt down to hug him, murmuring comfort. Toyon and the rest of the Obsidian family made excuses about supper on the stove, or animals to bring in to the barns. Someone called and pointed at yet another meteor. The confrontation was over. But Cat Watching still frowned from a perch on the boulder next to Five Toads House, and Swallow was on the verge of tears. _Whatever I started today,_ Xellos thought, _it's a long way from finished yet._


	18. Hard Truths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **LysdexicLuddite:** "I'm just saying, it's a long chapter with, like, a major twist, and you're basically spending 400 words to set up a _Dispossessed_ quote.
> 
> **MotherInLore:** [sticks out tongue, leaves it in.]

Swallow carried Plenty for as much of the two-day walk back to Chulkumas as Adsevin would allow. “For warmth,” she said. Xellos agreed that the infant was surprisingly exothermic, but he thought Swallow was talking about emotional warmth – like the barn cats back in Clear Lake all that time ago. He might need to recalibrate his plans for Swallow's next career. She had seemed like a natural reformer, but she would be less able than many reformers to ignore the agonies she caused as she tried to force this corrupt world into a more congenial shape. Perhaps she should lead a tribe of hedonists instead. Her tendency to accept other people for what they were could slide into amorality, if he took care. There were certain other temptations along that route for him, too. Even after nearly a year, the sensations of his human body still had novelty value for him. A chance to explore the delights of serotonin and dopamine while still forwarding Lord Beastmaster's goals sounded like a fine idea. Except the second-in-command to a pleasure-seeking leader could not afford to get lost in that kind of thing. Even so.... Xellos walked in silence, and strategized. The meteor showers continued in the late evenings; not as heavily as they would during the Grass, but two or three a night. Neither of the sisters said anything about them. 

None of the party had much to say to each other, really. Plenty slept. Swallow and Adsevin had either talked themselves out or did not wish Xellos to overhear them. He smelled a conspiracy brewing.

Or perhaps not a conspiracy: something more overt. Adsevin addressed Xellos out of the blue about a mile north of Chumo. “Aspen, do you have friends in Chulkumas that are yours, and not Swallow's?”

Xellos began to wonder if this “bringing in” Adsevin said she was going to have amounted to therapy, or a trial. Or, given small-town politics, some sort of feral hybrid? Well, he simply had to remain flexible. _I did plan for the possibility that I, not Swallow, would be the primary target of the witch-hunt. We are not, after all, currently separable._

Given the extremely minor nature of the conflict he saw coming, Xellos' own fear surprised him, a little. He felt himself coming alert, attending sharply to small details. Or was it not fear, but eagerness, excitement after a year of too much calm? And some caution was indeed warranted. I am no longer the Beastmaster's Lieutenant. And these people would not much care if I was. He could no longer flatten Grandmother Mountain – or cause her to erupt – in a fit of pique. (Not that he had had fits of pique all that often, but still.) Swallow had far more power among these people than he did. Ah, but I can outthink them. And I can still think of- and do- things they would never dare. It was not likely to be pleasant, even if, as was more than likely, his fears were exaggerated. _Well, my pleasure has never been the matter at stake. I just have to do what I can turn this to advantage._ His thrall emitted a rich, buttery aura of sorrow and anxiety, complicated by the smoky flavor of compassion, just as she had for days and weeks, with a thick layer of determination holding everything together like cornmeal batter. _She feels it too. One way or another, the circle we've been in is going to break. We're going to unleash the winds of change._ Xellos breathed the chill, fog-damp air of early Fall and made himself a promise. _I will dance on that wind._

“Aspen?” Adsevin prodded.

“Oh! Friends. Yes. Sorry....” Xellos smiled brightly. “Not very many of them, I don't think, but Garlic and I spend a great deal of time with each other and I believe he feels rather fatherly about me. And I'm learning with Reedbed of the Water Art, though she maybe likes my work more than she likes me.”

“Worry,” Swallow suggested. “It would be good to have Worry there. I was thinking I'd rather we all sat outside anyway.”

_A dog!_ Xellos blinked, then nearly sputtered as he digested the implications. She was saying one of his only allies in the Valley was a _dog!_ “And are you going to bring Fefinum to this... event?” he challenged.

Swallow shook her head. Plenty began to squeak and root at Swallow's chest, and Swallow handed her back to Adsevin. “No, not even if the Train gets back in time. Fefinum wouldn't really have anything to say that Peregrine or one of the other Finders couldn't. Worry might, though.”

They really had lingered too long in the Valley, Xellos thought. That had almost made sense.

 

****

The morning of the Bringing-In, they came early to their chosen gathering place: a flat stretch of ground shaded by a madrone tree called Hurides and a stand of eucalyptus trees who did not have human names yet. The aromatic leaves littered the ground. Adsevin and Garlic, wearing their long Doctors' Lodge vests, scratched the two interlocking curves of the heyiya-if in the mulch, large enough so that the pattern could hold a dozen people or so. Swallow rubbed the matching pattern graven on her cheek, and then went around gathering curling tubes of eucalyptus bark to make a few hand-hitters, in case there was singing later. Garlic brought a drum; Hempseed would likely do the same, and maybe one or two of the others. Xellos perched in the branching trunks of the madrone and watched. Worry sniffed and scratched at the upturned mulch around the heyiya-if. Nobody reprimanded the dog; they weren't making a spell diagram, after all, just marking a place to sit.

Swallow watched Xellos with half an eye: he was in Coyote's Son mode, horribly cheerful and ready to make mischief, with any small stream of concern running deep under the surface of amused curiosity. He might well find the next hour or two funny. Swallow didn't think his pride was at stake the way hers was, having her friends here in the open air, hearing just how sour things were between herself and the _haibi_ she mysteriously wouldn't kick out. Swallow knew her voice would tremble when she spoke; her words would come out in the wrong order. She would know everyone's pity or contempt whether they spoke it or not, and even that shame was nothing compared to the fear she could not speak yet without it coming out into the Five Houses. She might die today, if Xellos was right about their lives being twined together that tightly, if the gathered minds of the bringing-in decided he was too dangerous to live. And she didn't know what she might do if her life were in danger. After the Moon, when she'd been reeling with the near-miss with Careful, Xellos had told her, _Had you truly been out of control, you would have vaporized the brains of everyone nearby._ And if his emotions spiked at the same time hers did, she could well lose control. All it would take was someone saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

People wandered in and sat down, the fastidious on pads or blankets, others on the bare leaf litter. Gall brought embroidery with her to occupy her fidgety hands. Hempseed brought a drum. There was no rule today, as there was sometimes, about who should sit in the left arm or the right of the heyiya-if, it was just a demarcation of space. Swallow and Xellos sat next to each other, marking the inner end of the right arm, and Adesvin and Garlic sat across the hinge at the left. The two doctors consulted each other gravely; it occurred to Swallow that one of the many ways this bringing-in was a strange one was that neither Doctor was trained much in this kind of medicine; they were both handlers – Garlic the pharmacist and Adsevin, who helped people retrain their bodies after injuries and applied acupuncture during painful operations. _I love my sister dearly, but I hope she knows what she's doing..._ Swallow rolled her shoulders, took a deep breath, and tried to calm herself, reciting a Finders' chant in her head, naming the rivers that fed the Inland Sea. _Lemaha and Rekwit, Going down, going down to the sea..._

****

Shining brought Pumpkin with her, apologizing all the while. “Mother and Fairweather are both down with that cold that's going around” she said, sounding flustered. “I'll take her away if she's too much trouble.” The rest of the gathering made polite noises, and Pumpkin staggered among them, vocalizing assiduously and largely unintelligibly. She stared hard at Plenty, who lay on a blanket near Adsevin's work things, waving her arms in front of her face and staring in fascination at the way she could make those fringy things at the end of them curl up and stretch out. “Beebee?” Pumpkin asked, and put out a hand for Plenty to grab. Once Plenty turned her head away, Pumpkin crawled and staggered among the various adults, finally approaching Worry and patting him awkwardly until the dog got up and wandered away, then scrambling up into Xellos' lap. “Dedo, Dedo! Dedo dimanico!” she demanded. She bounced up and down, imperiously.

Xellos looked at her with his head tilted on one side. “What was that?” It occurred to him that, should he need to force action from the assembly, he could kill Pumpkin very easily indeed, even with merely human strength. If he needed to do that, though, he would not give any warning of his intention ahead of time. Threats were for weaklings.

“Dedo dimanico!” Pumpkin bounced again.

“Oh, very well, I suppose we have time.” Xellos rearranged his legs so they stretched out in front of him, knees slightly flexed, and lifted Pumpkin up to stand on them, keeping his hands around her ribcage to help her balance, and prepared to repeat a lesson in elementary demonic metaphysics. “Time,” he explained, jiggling his knees while Pumpkin leaned on his arms, “is tyrannical. Time is a manacle. Super-mechanical, Super-organical, Pop!” He parted his knees abruptly and tipped Pumpkin backward and down, as she shrieked with delight. 

“Dedo!” she crowed, “Dedo, Dedo, dedo!”

“Not now, Pumpkin.” Shining plucked the baby away. “Come have some food. Want some beets?”

“Beep?” 

“Come have some beets.” Shining deposited Pumpkin back on the blanket she had brought and produced from somewhere a small pot containing roasted beet slices. Pumpkin gnawed contentedly and gradually turned crimson from the nose down as the juice dribbled. The adults, meanwhile, finally settled down enough for Garlic to pick up his drum and beat five, and then four. 

“Heya,” he said, “Heya hey, heya,” and then Adsevin joined him, then Swallow and most of the rest of them. 

Adsevin took the drum. “We mean to have a bringing-in, here in this place and this time. We are here because my sister Swallow asked us to be here, out in the open air where anyone may come or go, where anyone may see or hear. She has chosen this because she does not want secrets, does not want the roof of the Doctors' Lodge over her head. Swallow has said there is a sickness between herself and her _haibi,_ Xellos Coyote's Son of no house, that she does not know how to name nor how to treat. And she has asked for our help. And Xellos, whom we all know at least a little, has agreed to come and to listen, though he has not asked for help and has not said anything about sickness or ease. And so we are here.”

“So we are here,” the gathering repeated. Xellos sat up straight and concentrated, preparing himself for any of a thousand courses of action.

*****

 

“Suppose you begin, sister-binyez. Speak your illness as well as you can.”

Swallow gulped and took two shaky breaths, and then began, low, and rapidly. “I can only tell you the story of what happened – a long story, by now, and most of you have heard some of it before, but I hope you will all be patient. I had been studying with the Klatsaand people, down in the southern part of the Range of Light, and I was on my way home, when I met some other people who were traveling...” 

She told the whole, weary tale of it – How among a gathering of strangers, the one they called a devil seemed the sanest and least frightening of them all, though the others warned her. How, all the same, she had befriended all five of her fellow-travelers, and had shared more than she had a right to of the Carrion Gyre. How the power had grown, and twisted, in the hands of the twisted-necked sorcerers... Swallow deliberately shut her new senses in as tightly as she could – trying to tell everything as truly as she could, trying for once not to bend to whatever her friends wanted to hear. Even pulled in, she felt the chill of Xellos' shock and anger when she told the part where he bragged of reversing the poles of the earth and killing the City of Mind. But Peregrine already knew, and Mouse Dance in Tachas Touchas, and a few of the others. Had he really thought she was stupid enough to leave a secret that big in his hands? 

She plowed on, her words sounding both fantastic and banal in her own ears: the journey home from volcano country. The long struggle of the last year. Xellos' disconcerting swings between seeming like her best, closest friend, a true _giyakwunshe,_ and the sense, never quite with any real proof behind it, that he was undermining her at every turn, even as he encouraged her to grow in power. The constant, gnawing fear that he, or even worse, she, was about to do something really terrible. Even as she spoke, she could imagine counterarguments. _I sound like I'm whining. Poor me, my_ haibi _doesn't love me enough..._ But she forced herself to go on to the end. “I wonder,” she concluded, trying to name her sickness, “if I am living the story of Dira. I'm not afraid of Xellos in the usual ways, but I still feel the pincers at my throat, and the blood draining... and I know I don't have the strength to send him away. Whether we are truly joined in the ninth house, or if we are bound only because we both believe we are bound, if you all send him away, I will go with him. Maybe that's best. I don't know what to do anymore. So I've asked you all to be here, under the sky, where there are no secrets, and whatever you have to say, I am listening.”

There was a silence, which Hazelnut broke. “What if we decide to drown him in eucalyptus oil, like Dira?” she joked.

“I won't stop you.” Swallow was not joking. Xellos had warned her a time or two, that she might die when he did. But given the choice, she would rather die in Chulkumas now than in exile later.

Xellos cleared his throat, and then said nothing. Garlic looked at him. “That can't have been easy to listen to, boy.”

Xellos shrugged languidly. “I've heard worse.”

“Do you have anything you want to say now?”

Xellos blinked and then smiled sadly. “Well,” he said, and Swallow stiffened with dread. Xellos' voice was light and gentle as aloe vera. He always used that voice for saying the worst things. “Tell me, friends: does she sound sane to you?”

Swallow hugged her knees and bit the inside of her lip. Her friends had called her crazy before, in a tolerant sort of way, when they disagreed, but this was different. She would not rise to the bait, wouldn't drive herself mad trying to defend herself. She had put herself in her friends' hands.

“Because,” Xellos went on, “there is an illness that tends to show itself at about the age Swallow is now, where one ceases to recognize one's own thoughts and instead calls them Rainbow People, or Demons. Such people often imagine themselves to have great powers or frightening destinies. And sometimes, just to be thoroughly confusing, this kind of illness is triggered by a genuine encounter with the Four Houses that one is not prepared for. You can see why I might be worried.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Swallow saw Hazelnut draw herself up indignantly, but Kemel, beside her, nodded. _Well,_ Swallow told herself, _Kemel's a Miller. He likes it when things fit into ordinary, everyday patterns._ Gall, too, seemed to be weighing Xellos' words, though she didn't say anything and kept staring at her embroidery. Shining, out near the edge of the left arm of the heyiya-if, twisted her fingers together and spoke hesitantly: “Swallow can do things, though; we've all seen her. She makes those little floating lights at night sometimes, and it was only a nineday ago that she froze that cancerous mole off Fairweather's arm. And Pepperblossom of the Blue Clay told me Swallow handled her abortion and didn't even need the needles.”

“Yes.” Xellos nodded. “All little things, those. No volcanoes, no giant electromagnetic pulses. And yet, she says she is afraid.”

Adsevin narrowed her eyes and pinned Xellos with the look she used to stop Bounce when got wound up. “Aspen, tell us, yes or no: did the wakwa in the Volcano Country happen as Swallow described it? 

“It did,” he said, easily,

“Was that the power that reversed the poles, and did you intend it to happen?”

Xellos' eyebrow twitched, and he was silent for a long time. But even now, Swallow noted, he would not lie. “...Yes,” he said at last.

Adsevin drew herself up. “Well then,” she said. “Swallow does not have the moongazer sickness. I say this not only because I have seen something of her new powers but because she doesn't fit the patterns. Some of the big ones, yes, but not the little ones- there are speech and gestural patterns that moongazers share, for instance. Would you agree, Garlic? And I think we have just seen that Aspen has indeed been trying to work some mischief and come between my sister and her people.”

Gall looked up. “That's what I was trying to work out just now,” she said. “I've wondered about Swallow over the summer, but I was just thinking it over – every time I wondered if maybe her brain was turning, it was because of something I remembered that Egret there saying. But I can't think why he would do such a thing.”

Everyone stared at Xellos with identical mystified expressions. He paused a long time, then gave a slow, fluid shrug. “It was worth a try. Swallow is changing – needs to change – more than she or you would be comfortable with to be able to use her powers fully. I thought it would be better for her to come to this conclusion herself rather than being pushed into it. So I have been emphasizing the ways the Valley is no longer an easy fit.”

Hazelnut glared at him in pure loathing and held up both her hands, thumbs folded in and all eight of her other fingers crossed, not just middle and index. _Leave it to my sister the clown to find a way to make the Twisted-neck gesture even ruder,_ Swallow thought. Hazelnut clearly no longer had any doubt where the sickness lay. The question of what to do about it remained.

Garlic hastened to take the attention back and allow Hazelnut to settle down a bit. “Let's come at this from a different direction,” he said. “Tell us, boy, what was it like where you came from? What did you do before you crossed the Range of Light and came into our part of the world?”

Xellos laughed a little and cupped the back of his head with his hand. “That's a couple of thousand years' worth of stories. Can you be more specific?”

Garlic smiled patiently. “Start with the things that stayed the same, perhaps.”

Xellos sobered. “My people are called the mazoku,” he began. “Or some people simply call us monsters. We are the children of Chaos, siblings and enemies of the gods. The gods, in their arrogance, created the world by forcing many things together that did not belong, and the goal of the mazoku is to undo this wrong and return the world to chaos. We feed on emotions that most humans would prefer to avoid: pain, sorrow, anger, hatred, fear. Swallow, when she first met me, called me 'healer,' but that is not entirely correct. Certainly healing is not our intention. Of my kind, I was very powerful. Only the Five Demon Lords – Three and a half, now – and the Dark Lord Shabranigdo, who sleeps, were above me, and perhaps only a dozen other mazoku were my equals. I served the Five Demon Lords, most often the one called Zelas, Honored Chief of the Four-Legged People. She is the one who called me into being and would be the equivalent of a mother, I suppose.”

“How did you serve her?” Garlic asked.

Xellos shrugged again. “Anything from killing a few dozen dragons to whispering in the ear of a guildmaster's favorite concubine.”

No one, to Swallow's relief, was sufficiently distracted to ask what a guildmaster was, or a concubine. She herself was struck by the undercurrents of Xellos' mood: he was, she thought, a little... confused? Alert, excited, a little afraid but having fun: all those she had, more or less, expected. But something... _are we reaching him? Does the Valley way of talking and listening work even on sick coyotes?_

“But whatever you did, it was always to increase your mother's power, was it not? Or to further her ends?” Garlic suggested.

“Yes,” Xellos agreed simply.

Peregrine, seated in the left arm behind Garlic, cleared his throat and spoke for the first time. “I want to know more about what he said earlier, about Swallow needing to use her power. Because it seems to me that she is already doing that quite a lot. She's very generous with it, really.”

Xellos' expression did not change, and Swallow guessed that only she and he were aware of the profound internal squirm this question awoke. _That's another one you were hoping we wouldn't ask, wasn't it?_

Eventually, though, Xellos had an answer: “At present,” he said, “Swallow's power all comes from me and my emotions. I don't mind her making use of them, but she should learn to draw from other wells also. If she's squeamish about using her other friends' unhappiness, there are other powers she could invoke. She has thus far refused to learn how.”

“Thus far,” Swallow echoed tightly, “he has offered to teach me how to ask the War Snake to make a massive fireball like a methane explosion. He has offered to teach me how to ask the Chief of the Four-Legged People to destroy a row of targets all in a line. He has offered to teach me how to ask the Chief Who is the Son of a Chief how to freeze a living person solid. He has offered to teach me how to ask the Chief of Darkness on the Inner Planets to help me make any of these other attacks more powerful.”

“Is Grandmother Mountain only powerful when she erupts, then?” Kemel asked, “Not when she's running the electrical plant at Kastoha or making the geyser spout at Puma's Well?

Shining hissed in anger, making Pumpkin squeak nervously. “Conditions on gifts are _odious_ , no-house man.”

Hazelnut, though, laughed and grabbed one of the hand-hitters Swallow had made earlier. She began to clack out a rhythm and made a song to the tune of the old Chumo shepherd ditty, “Not That One, Coyote.”

_Come, use my Power_   
_Not that way, Coyote!_   
_Use it just like I do!_   
_Better look out, Coyote!_

_I made you dinner_   
_Eat it all, Coyote:_   
_Bread and poison mushrooms_   
_Better look out, Coyote!_

The song spread through the gathering; Hempseed added his drum to the hand-hitter; Gall repeated Hazelnut's verses and added one of her own:

_Come be my master,_   
_Be the Head, Coyote,_   
_I'll be the neck now,_   
_Better look out, Coyote._

The song went around a few more times, getting rowdier, with more people joining in. Worry stopped scratching among the leaves and trotted back to Xellos, ready to join the party. He let out an eager bark and wagged his tail. Swallow laughed, feeling lighter. Xellos hunched in, sulkily, watching his trick fall apart into jokes. Garlic held up his hands. “I think we'd better put that song away,” he said loudly, and the drums stopped. “That was not polite,” he apologized to Xellos. “Maybe the rudeness was helpful, but it very seldom is... would it be fair to say, though, that you are trying to increase your wife's power, as you did for your mother when you lived with her? And that you hope your wife will thereby come to want the same things your mother does, so there is no conflict between them?”

Xellos breathed out hard through his nose. He hunched in on himself, clutching his elbows, and said nothing.

“I think you'll find, boy, that they are different people,” Gall said, “and it will not always be possible not to take sides. Divided loyalties are a man's lot in life. If you were to ask me how to choose, I might say it was better to choose the woman who took you in, rather than the one who cast you out. But it's your choice.”

“I was not cast out!” Xellos snapped. “I volunteered! She'll take me back when it's time for me to die!”

Swallow blinked at the roil of passion and hurt under the words. It took her only a moment to recognize the familiar ache of homesickness. _City of Man, Coyote's Son, every time I think you've gone outermost and I'll never forgive you again, I find myself feeling sorry for you. Are you doing that to me on purpose somehow? Am I doing it to myself?_ But then Garlic's words reminded her of something else, and she let out a watery, rueful laugh and patted Xellos on the shoulder.

“We're both making Agate's mistake, aren't we?” 

“Eh?” Xellos blinked at her from wherever his thoughts had gone.

“Maybe you'd better explain that one a little more, _binyez,_ ” Adsevin suggested gently, “It sounds important.”

“Agate keeps trying to give me the Doctor's lodge, and being unhappy when I don't go all the way in with her. And I've been trying to give the valley to Xellos, and he's trying to give me the Wind's house... I do feel, though," she said to the man beside her, "like I'm trying to find ways to take my gifts without losing myself, and you're trying to refuse them and keep them outside yourself.”

Xellos shrugged. “What did you expect?”

“You are the one who told me that home is a place for becoming.”

Xellos glared at her, suddenly fierce. “This,” he spat, “Is not my home.”

Swallow reeled internally and tried to think. He was jealous, she decided. She had found ways to hold power in the valley; he didn't know how to hold friendship in the Wind's house. “Maybe,” she said aloud, reluctantly, “Maybe it really would be better for us to go somewhere else.” And then she had to recover a little from the blow of everyone's shock, not just Xellos'. “Somewhere like – no, not Sed; I have too many friends there. Somewhere like Stoy, say, or Loklotso, where we're starting out even.”

He smiled at her from under lowered eyelashes. “If you think so,” he breathed. The triumph he was trying to hide was enough to warn Swallow that she had better think about that idea some more before she did anything final.

“I'm not sure that's the first problem to solve,” Peregrine spoke for the first time, echoing her thoughts. “If Swallow is trying to reach out and her _haibi_ wants isolation, that pattern will repeat wherever they are.”

“What do you want, boy?” Garlic demanded, “What's the important thing for you to hold on to while we make our way?”

Xellos spread his hands and smiled blankly, tilting his head into the sunlight. “In a way,” he said, “Nothing is.”

_“Nothing?”_

Xellos shrugged, looking old and foreign. He scratched Worry's ears, absentmindedly. “I was willing to sacrifice everything for one victory,” he explained. “I still have that victory. Now, to be sure, some possible futures appeal to me more than others, but none of it is _important._ ”

Swallow went cold, all through. The words sounded mild enough, but he wasn't saying he was willing to back down. He was saying that she and the others had nothing to bargain with. And the chances that someone in the gathering would say the wrong thing and set him off grew with every word.

“Y'know,” Hempseed said drowsily, “he mostly does do whatever Swallow tells him to. I noticed that.”

Swallow hadn't noticed. Judging by the way he sat up straight and stared, neither had Xellos. But when she thought about it... day by day, he did, more often than not. Even some of the big things: like deciding to join the Water Art. She had suggested it – had he taken it as an order? She didn't want to be in a place where she had to keep telling him what to do, but all the same... She put a hand on Xellos' shoulder, and caught his eye when glanced at her. “If you mean to take orders from me, then here's one: Stop trying to separate me from my people.”

He looked back, measuring, considering, and finally essayed a cautious nod. Hazelnut whooped and chortled. “Heya, sister! Now order him to stop being such a pinworm all the time!”

Swallow grinned and shook her head. “Let him have his fun. If he's out-clowning you, then maybe you just need to get better.” Hazelnut stuck out her tongue.

“er...” Xellos cleared his throat. “Pinworm? What does a pinworm do, exactly?”

“Makes your asshole itch, mostly,” Swallow told him.

“Ah.” Xellos stroked his chin. “Most vivid. I shall remember that one.”

Baby Plenty began to fuss, and Shining brought her to Adsevin, to nurse. Adsevin arranged her in a sling so she could have her hands free and took up Garlic's drum. “I think we have done enough talking for a while, maybe,” Adsevin said. “We have a name for the sickness, and we've cleared the air a little. If we haven't talked our way all the way back in to health, yet, still we have started on the road, and more talking will not get us further. Are we agreed?” Various people round the heyiya-if nodded. Garlic took up his drum, and Adsevin began singing the Coming Out song. To Swallow's surprise, Adsevin did not choose one of the Doctors' chants, but a simple doggerel every Serpentine child learned between the ages of three and six. Perhaps she chose it so that the rest of the gathering could join in. Perhaps she thought Xellos needed the simple lesson, though singing was not usually the way to reach him. Perhaps she thought Swallow needed reminding.

_We need the dark,_   
_We need the light_   
_To go on, to go on._   
_We need the stones and sky to go on._   
_We need the in_   
_We need the out_   
_To go on, to go on,_   
_We need the lamb and lion to go on._

Everyone sang for a while, and then Garlic beat four and five and the bringing-in was over, mostly. Hazelnut and Shining chatted a little, Kemel talked with Peregrine. Gall hummed, “not that one, coyote,” and gathered her sewing back into its carrysack. Adsevin rubbed Plenty's back until she burped and then embraced Swallow, gently, making accommodation for Plenty. Swallow hugged her back, feeling simultaneously comforted and miserable. Her friends didn't think she was crazy. They weren't going to throw her out. But neither was Xellos going to come further inward. _This is not my home,_ he'd said, and he wasn't going to miraculously turn into someone else, and the next thing she had to do wasn't going to get any easier or safer. Swallow had been delaying, but delay was pointless. She marched back to where Xellos and Worry lounged. “Let's grab the blanket and our canteens and walk up the mountain together,” she said. It was not a suggestion, though she would allow him to negotiate so far as a day or two. “You and I have some things to talk about.”

“Oh?” Xellos raised his eyebrows. “Things we can't talk about here?”

“If things go bad and you flood me out, I don't want to put everyone else in danger.” Swallow clenched her hands.

Xellos tittered. “ _Binyez,_ you're worrying about nothing. You took the whole brunt of my misery when I discovered what the Carrion Gyre had made of me with no training whatsoever. Do you really imagine there could be worse coming?”

“Yes,” Swallow told him gravely. “I think so.”

 

******

 

Xellos eyed his thrall, calculating. It spoke well for her perceptiveness, that she had come away from the platitudes of the Bringing-In in a state of heightened, not lessened, tension. This new demand piqued his curiosity greatly. Having more-or-less admitted that she was weaker away from her community, what did Swallow think she was doing, demanding a separation now? He placed no store in her talk of him flooding her out. She was stronger than that, he knew. Why fight so hard against her own strength, rather than embracing it? What did she have left to fight with? He took a deep breath and smiled. “Food?” he inquired.

“I have some pollen-chia balls in my pouch,” Swallow told him, “and it's a good time of year for gathering if we need to stay long.” Chia balls were meant to be filling. One took them with enough water to swell the seeds inside the stomach afterward; an ideal choice if one were undertaking something arduous. 

Xellos stood up and folded the blanket, tucking it under one arm, and followed Swallow as she plowed up the mountain as though she were prepared to walk to Stoy right then. Worry tagged along, intrigued. “Where are we going?” Xellos asked her, keeping his own voice mild and calm. Which only irritated her further, of course, but she didn't slow down.

“I thought maybe the camp by Bifido, where we stayed while we made the Firebreak.”

Fewmets, she really was frightened.

“We're halfway to the Grass, Swallow; the light won't last long enough for us to get there. Wouldn't one of the summerhouses be far enough? You can always aim away from town, you know.”

 

Swallow blew out her breath. “Fine. Let's go to the one that Smoke's household uses, by the Puma's Bed.” She chose the relevant footpath as unthinkingly as if she were moving about within their rooms at Red Beams House.

Xellos followed her, as Worry gamboled in loops around them both. In a moment or two, he recalled his mental map and realized that they had left the Little Summer Road and were now on the Claybeds Road, and would indeed arrive eventually at the fir grove called Puma's Bed (for its tendency to hold the fog just a little longer than the surrounding area) and the attendant three-walled summerhouse: the furthest out of them all, and with broad Little Fern Creek between it and the town. He just hoped the shelter wouldn't leak too much if it started raining. No one worried about weatherproofing the summerhouses, because when there was any weather to speak of, they weren't in use. These little worries drowned out the larger ones about what Swallow was been building up to. It was not likely to be pleasant, even if, as was more than probable, her fears were exaggerated. _Well, my pleasure has never been the matter at stake. I just hope that I can turn this to advantage._

 

*****

_I am defeating a warrior,_ Swallow told herself. _I am revenging myself against the twisted-neck who killed the Exchanges and tricked me into helping him. I am breaking the circle of his sickness._ Whatever nascent humanity Coyote's Son had managed to build for himself, Swallow had to ignore it, or she would not be able to do this. _And I have to do this._

Her companion spoke. “You've been working your way up to this for quite some time, haven't you? Why did you choose now for a confrontation?”

Had there been a single day since they first took hands that hadn't been flavored by that amused curiosity? It would be like giving up salt, to leave that behind. _I have to believe it will come back. That breaking the Warrior-soul won't kill the other souls, but give them room to grow. And even if it doesn't work that way, I have to do this._

“The shooting stars,” she said aloud, in answer to his question.

Xellos smirked. “Really, Swallow! Are you that superstitious after all? Signs and portents?”

She shook her head impatiently. “Not superstition. I know exactly where those lights are coming from, and why, and what it means. If I dither now, my choice will be taken from me, and the results would still be much the same. At least this way, we're both prepared.” She looked at him, gauging the strength of the trickling stream of concern that ran through his endless, clicking calculations. “Or at least warned,” she concluded. “Here's Puma's Bed.”

The summerhouse stood on a bluff, directly overlooking Little Fern Creek but high enough above it to discourage mosquitoes. In the season where it saw the most use, its open side welcomed a view of the whole township and beyond, clear to the lower vineyards of Mididinou. Now, it overlooked a blanket of fog. Swallow swept the floor of two moons' worth of debris with a single blast of power, startling Xellos, who had arranged himself in a careless-looking lounge against the center roof post, and Worry, who had been patrolling the outside of the summerhouse and marking the corners. Swallow laid out her own bedroll and started a little fire in the firepit. She spent more power, recklessly, to break pieces off a dry dead limb from one of the firs above them, and bring them down gently, one at a time, until they had a good stack of wood to feed the fire with. And then she drew a breath. She was as ready as she was going to get.

“Just about a year ago,” Swallow began, watching the little thread of concern begin to swell in Xellos’ mood as the wisps of smoke grew from the kindling, “between the Wine and the Grass, you and I were making our way down through the volcano country toward the Line. And I asked you one night what you- we- had done that killed the City of Mind. And you told me. And then you told me how you had known what to do. And after that--”

“After that, I asked you why you took comfort from my answer,” Xellos supplied, “and you refused to tell me.” He dipped his chin and opened his eyes a little wider, gazing at her from under his brows. “Are you going to tell me now?”

Swallow matched his stillness with her own, clenching her hands at her sides to keep from reaching out to pat his shoulder, or maybe sock him in the jaw. “When you studied the tutorials with the City of Mind,” she went on, “you must have chosen the search terms having to do with the exchanges. You knew that if you reversed the polarity of the earth, you would destroy every exchange, everywhere in the world. But the exchanges are only part of the City of Mind.”

“Ah, but we destroyed every one of the machines in the Terrestrial Cybernet. Not just the exchanges, but the memory banks and the repair factories.” Xellos was still smiling, and Swallow wondered why he bothered. He wasn't fooling either of them. 

“In the _terrestrial_ cybernet, yes.” At her emphasis, his eyes snapped open and his head upward, and she was looking at two great purple camas flowers, in a face as pale as it had been a year ago, when the sun couldn't touch it. “Machines don't need air, after all,” she said, gently, “or water, or food... so the City of Mind has nodes on the moon, too, and on Kemel and Adsevin and the other planets. They all communicate with each other, if slowly, since there's all that distance to travel. The memory banks are all backed up.”

Xellos sprang up away from the roof post, but his stance was the beginning of a crouch, and his shoulders heaved. He looked fragile. _“What?”_

Swallow kept her tone even and relentless. It was the voice people used at deathbeds, when there was kindness but no hope. “So those other nodes have been building transports,” she told him, “and now those carriers are coming down, bringing within them other machines to rebuild what was broken here. They'll be able to reuse a lot of the parts from the machines we killed, and the more they rebuild, the faster it will go. I would guess that it might be only another year or two before all the exchanges are up and running, even the one in Seyruun that was never completed.”

“Blessed Cepheid and all his fucking angels,” Xellos breathed, horrified. 

Swallow could feel that horror rising within her, too, thick as honey cold as ice, refilling the reserves of power she'd emptied when she made camp and then some. Before they were done here, it might well spill over uncontrollably, as she had been afraid it would, but for now she could use that power to give her the strength she needed to say the last, deadly few words: “So no, reversing the poles didn't destroy the City, as you say your master wanted. It held the City back for a couple of years that the mazokude didn't know to make use of, since you didn't realize the pause was temporary, and didn't warn them. You failed, Coyote's Son. Your sacrifice was for nothing.”

Worry came back around to the inside of the summerhouse, looked at them both, and howled.


	19. At the Hinge

He'd been so certain, Xellos thought blankly. He'd been so sure he'd see this moment coming before it arrived. Swallow would gradually change into something colder, more ambitious and driven. She would probe him for weak spots and experiment with small cruelties. When the moment came for her to take her full power, when the positions of Thrall and Master were reversed and his long, final agony began, he would be prepared, and she would be ready to take his place serving Lord Beastmasater. The blow wasn't supposed to land out of nowhere like this. Swallow wasn't supposed to still be this human. This was supposed to be the completion of his sacrifice. _Your sacrifice was for nothing._

Even his loyalty had been taken and turned against him. Certainly, if Lord Beastmaster were to judge him, She would say this was more than mere failure; it was culpable negligence. The information about the backups and outposts of the City of Mind had to have been just as available to him as any other information held in the Exchanges, if only he had thought to ask those few, simple questions. He had not; he had recommended a useless course of action that, moreover, deprived Her of many of Her most valued resources. That he had overlooked those details out of eagerness to serve Her would not matter. She was not much interested in intentions, only results. These results, coming from someone She relied on so much, could only be called betrayal. _And now the power is coming into Swallow's hands entirely, and whomever Swallow serves, it is not Her._

 

In fact, Swallow, out of loyalty to the Valley, had done almost exactly what he would have done to her, if he could have. The knowledge burned inexorably as noonday sunlight. She had known about this failure all along; she had _played_ him! All the time that he'd been plotting to turn her soul, she'd been holding this in reserve. When he'd asked questions, her answers had been truthful and incomplete, and she'd let him fool himself with his own assumptions. _Now that I look at it, I can see all the clues I missed._ Her nervousness, during the journey back to the Na valley, whenever anyone started talking about the City: some of it had, as she said, been fear that she would somehow get in trouble. But some of it had been fear that someone would say something about the backup systems while he could still (maybe) do something about them. Now that his eyes were open, he could even remember hints he had heard and not caught at the time. I can't even say she was wrong, tactically speaking. _As she said at the beginning, we were – are? - on opposite sides when it comes to the Exchanges._ For a few moments, he savored a bittersweet pride at being bested by his pupil. Then he remembered that he had not really started teaching her until sometime after Swallow had decided to keep her own secret. _All for nothing, indeed._

The thoughts came faster and faster, repeating and ramifying themselves in horrible, blinding clarity. All the ways his plans had gone wrong. All the ways they were going to go wronger. The true, complete loss of what he had been before, and no recompense to balance it out. Only this shining circle of pain.

*****

Swallow had been braced for violence. She had tried to hold herself ready to push him back if he came for her, and to try not to kill him in the process, though honestly, letting him die might not have been a bad thing, even if he took her with him. But he did not come for her. His crouch folded in on itself until Coyote's Son was in the pose of the dancers around the Mourning Fire on the first night of the World _wakwa,_ balanced on his feet in a low squat, arms wrapped tightly around himself, rocking back and forth. When he had first learned the Carrion Gyre had left him human, he had screamed. Now, he keened, a long, thin sound like a cicada, sawing back and forth as he breathed in and out but never growing louder. He seemed to grow smaller as she watched. And within her, the power rose, too fast.

She couldn't open the doors wide enough. She sent a wind blowing fiercely uphill, away from the Valley toward the Huringa People's country. She clenched pressure around the firepit until the stones glowed like lava, and still the flood within her rose. Heavy and sticky, too slow and too fast at the same time, even under pressure the flood did not want to go out. It was breaking barriers, as she had feared it would, but not breaking its way into the world as a fire or a plague, nor as a wave of the invisible poison that caused cancers. No, it was breaking barriers inside her souls. The power channel the Carrion Gyre had scoured through her was crumbling into a lake, a crater. There was no place within her that the power did not pour, seeping into cracks and collapsing walls. The cold grew so intense it reversed itself into burning; there was nothing but the power, singing. 

From the middle of the flood, the honey-thick power flowing into her lungs, Swallow cried out; aloud, or only in the Four Houses, she could not have said. “Oh, my mothers of the rainbow! Serpentine!” she begged, “Grandmother Mountain! Help me!”


	20. Returning

When he next had any attention to spare for it, Xellos found the body had undergone a change in circumstances. Not an arduous one; there were not any injuries to speak of, but he did not recognize the dim little room he was sitting in, nor the odd, draped tunic he was wearing. It was an unsewn rectangle in soft, worn linen, with a hole in the middle for his head. The open sides wrapped around him and were held front and back with ties at ribcage level – meant to be waist level, he guessed, for most people in this part of the world. The borders of the cloth were woven in a Meander pattern that shifted color every hand-span or so: black, blue, green, yellow, red – the canonical colors of the Five Houses, though they and the undyed central expanse of the garment were both grayed with many washings. The long ends of the rectangle hit him at about mid-calf; the sides were surely not intended to make thigh-high, peekaboo slits, and that might be why he still had his trousers on beneath this other garment. The shirt he had been wearing when he'd last paid any heed to the matter was folded on the bench-chest that sat against one wall.

The room was, quite distinctly, a Valley room, with redwood planking for the ceiling and floor and a large and elaborate heyiya-if painted on one of the adobe-plastered walls. It was very quiet. Light and air, both in less than fully adequate quantities, came through a small window set in the wall at shoulder-height. Had Xellos been built like most of the Kesh, it would have been at neck- level: just right for staring through. As it was, the top of the window was level with his eyebrows. He had to stoop a little to see out clearly, but when he stood up and did so, he recognized the Common Place of Chulkumas. It seemed Swallow had gotten them both home, but not, for some reason, to Red Beams House. In fact, he couldn't quite place where he was at first; the view of the Common Place was from an unfamiliar angle. He fingered the soft linen of his tunic and thought.

A brisk tap and creak of hinges announced a visitor. Not Swallow; Swallow was somewhere nearby, but not here, and had not been so for long enough that the bond between them was a little stretched. Not painful, not yet, but more distinctly present than it had been for most of the last year. Xellos turned from the window and nodded politely to Deft, a middle-aged Obsidian woman he knew only slightly. She smiled a cool, brief smile. “Have you come back to yourself?” she asked.

“More or less.” Xellos glanced past her shoulder out the doorway and saw a large room with shelves, and someone else wearing a garment like his own walking by slowly. “How long have I been here in the Doctors' Lodge? And where is Swallow?” He did not ask, “Is she alright.” He had only to touch the bond to know that whatever she was doing, she was calm, and no sadder than she had been before.

“I see you have,” said Deft. “Drink your cider; you haven't been drinking enough.” She indicated a pottery carafe on the bench-chest. Only after Xellos took an obedient sip of cider – made with dried berry powder, not fresh apples, and tasting a bit astringent – did she go on to answer his questions. “Swallow's at the Serpentine heyimas with the scholars. I don't know if she's still having visions or not, but four days ago when she brought you in she was holding onto the Five Houses with her fingernails and barely able to talk to us at all. You two do like to put yourselves in danger, don't you?” Deft concluded rhetorically. Unlike say, Agate, she did not evince any desire to fix this characteristic in her patient.

“Having visions isn't a matter for the Doctors?” Xellos was still vague on what constituted insanity, from the Valley point of view, and what did not.

Deft shrugged. “Not usually.”

Xellos took another sip of cider, located the Doctors' Lodge on his mental map of the town, consulted the pull of the bond again, and concluded that Swallow was indeed still in the Serpentine heyimas. “What exactly did she say at the time?”

Deft's eyes narrowed. “Why don't you speak for yourself, for now? What can you tell me about what happened?”

Xellos closed his eyes briefly and took a breath, and then another swallow of cider. “What happened to me,” he said, “was a defeat. Or, more accurately, the defeat came some time ago and… you said it’s been four days? Then, four days before today I was forced to stop lying to myself about it.”

“Does this have something to do with the City of Mind coming back? I heard from someone that the people you came from hated the Exchanges.”

The 'someone' had probably been someone who had had it from Swallow. She might have even asked people not to talk about the Exchanges around him, out of 'tact.' And a desire to keep him in the dark. “That was the catalyst,” he confirmed.

“So,” Deft concluded, “You are re-grieving your exile. Do you want a bringing-in, or other help from the Doctors? We are here if you want us. If you would rather put on your own clothes and go back to Red Beams House, you may do that. We will still be here tomorrow, if your mind changes.”

So, after half an hour or so, Xellos stepped out into the main room of the Doctors' Lodge with his own shirt topping his trousers again. The room had emptied out; the other patients must have been taken to other parts of the lodge. Xellos looked briefly around at the shelves and cupboards lining the walls. A movement at the corner of the room caught his attention. Xellos turned to look and met a pair of sharp, purple-gray eyes.

It took him a moment to recognize them. Then, as he began to assess his reflection, the eyes narrowed and the lips straightened out, giving his ferrety features a more corvid aspect, an expression of alert, predatory concentration. He knew that expression. He was still in there, somewhere. It was not to be denied, however, that the 'there' he was in had altered to a surprising degree. There were faint lines in the forehead, which was in turn more visible than previously, since his bangs had grown down to his chin and were now brushed to either side of his face. The pale face had gone pink across the nose and cheeks – a mild sunburn – and was spattered here and there with freckles.

The changes didn't stop there. The blue shirt and gray trousers had a different silhouette than his old yellow shirt and black trousers, and beneath the clothes his posture, too, had altered; in fact his entire musculature had. His usual mixture of housekeeping, plumbing, study, and farm work with the occasional quarterstaff session had given him enough variety of exercise that nothing had actually gone flabby, but his build was no longer that of a dancer. The muscles had adapted themselves to their myriad tasks; they had become means, not end. The spine stooped very slightly: the pose of a scholar, or perhaps simply of a tall man who spent most of his time politely trying to meet people on the level. None of the differences were very pronounced, but Xellos had spent millennia looking exactly the same and knowing to a hair exactly where his physical self began and ended. To find it so altered after only a little over a year's inattention... _Has even my body been taken from me?_

“See anyone you know in there?” Deft was amused.

Xellos shrugged and essayed a light laugh. “I think this is the first mirror I've seen since I came to the Valley.”

“Oh, we have them; they're mostly just smaller than this. We use this one to treat phantom limbs and other neurological problems.” Deft lined her nose up with the edge of the mirror and waved her hands, demonstrating. “It lets the brain see the body doing things it can't quite manage on its own, you see.”

“That's very interesting,” Xellos told her politely, and made his farewells.

The moment he stepped out the door, a blast of doggy joy hit him in the face like a hot wind. _Oh, yes! Yes! Goodgoodgood!_ Worry barked and wriggled ecstatically, rolling over on Xellos' shoe and wagging his tail, ears perked like flags, then sprang up and wound his way around Xellos' legs every time he took a step, all to let Xellos know how much he had been missed these last four days. Xellos aimed a wan kick at the dog's ribs. Worry scooted out of the way, then pranced back a moment later with his favorite rope knot, dropping it at Xellos' feet and quivering hopefully. Xellos stepped over the knot and on his way. Worry butted his head on Xellos' knee, tail wagging. _Please? Yes? Oh, Pleaseplease...._ Xellos growled. Had he even a sliver of his old power left he would have pinched two fingers together and the stupid creature would have evaporated in a puff of smoke and pain. Worry butted him again. Xellos shot him a sideways glance of utter disgust, reached down, and hurled the knot away with all his strength, clear across the Common Place. Twelve seconds later, Worry brought it back.

 

****

Garlic looked up from his worktable as Xellos walked into Red Beams House. “So you are here, boy.”

“I suppose so.” Xellos looked about the room, a bit blankly. There was no reason at all for him to be here. Everything had been taken away. But he was, in fact, here. So.

“I've got supper cooking already,” Garlic informed him. Cooking still, Xellos' nose told him. The stew on the stove had the brownish smell of several days' worth of slow simmering. Garlic had probably added a little more water, (or wine, for flavor) a handful of grain, a few chips of venison jerky, or a late tomato or two, day by day. The result would best be eaten without much attention paid to it. And with more wine or cider to wash it down. “Chickens could do with fresh straw, if you need something to do,” Garlic said, bent over his mortar again, “or it can wait if you'd rather not.”

Xellos stood, silent. So. He was here. That was the sink. That was the bookshelf. That was the text on fluid dynamics Reedbed had told him to look at. That was Swallow's scribbled-on travel journal. That was Garlic's mentor's herbal. That was the novel, _Dangerous People,_ by Wordriver, and that was the poetry collection, _Walking with Lions,_ by Giver Ire. That was the sewing basket. Xellos blinked again and turned around to look out the open door at the porch in the afternoon sunlight, and then went to attend the chickens.

 

****

They were spinning. So quickly, they were spinning, so quickly! All Swallow's journeys, end to end, wouldn't take her half as far as even the Lakwanwe boulders traveled in half a day. She hadn't gone anywhere the rest of the world hadn't gone. A breath ago, her people had come singing from Ngsi Altai and the Bear had sat down in Tachas Touchas, called thereafter “Where the Bear Sat Down.” If Swallow blinked, the Valley would be a shallow marsh like the one that surrounded Ikul, and the Inland sea would be marked by new, flat islands made shell by shell by generations of oysters and barnacles and a new kind of crab that built caves like anthills. The first of those crabs would be born in another hundred years. The hawk flew on. It had once been a pteranodon. No matter. There was nothing but the turning, and the shining. _Swallow._

Swallow was nothing. Swallow was a word for a small bird that had flown in the skies of one planet, there, for a time, before becoming something else. _Swallow. Woman-Like-a-Swallow, of the Serpentine House and the Finders' and Doctors' Lodges. Giyakwunshe._ Swallow was tiny. Swallow was pulled so hard toward a center that wasn't even the center, she couldn't feel the spinning. She was trying to catch at shadows with hands of light, as five-house people did. _Come back..._ There was nothing to come back. Names did not live in this place. _Swallow._

Something pulled. Something heavy, and very, very cold. That was what Swallow was. Swallow was what was being pulled. Downward, inward. Or was it outward? Smaller, smaller.... Swallow became her own ashes again. The singing between the stars had become the hum of a ventilation fan, somewhere above the still, dim, room in the Serpentine heyimas. Swallow blew her breath out in relief. It had been hard, coming back, but she was glad to be home. Her guiding thread still pulled – cold and sharp, spun of sorrow and pain... it was Xellos, of course. Poor coyote, she hoped people had been looking out for him while she'd been flying with the hawk. She wondered how long it had been. She needed to pee. Swallow stretched carefully and stepped back into the world.


	21. Uses of Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for graphic rodent slaughter.

Years later, Swallow would remember the second rainy season after the poles switched as being a strange one, full of unusual problems and peculiar comforts. Xellos, grieving and nearly inert, fit into both categories. It was hard to live with, his sorrow and despair and shame, that ice-cold flow that left her buzzing and tingling with too much power. She still feared his anger, buried down deep under the other emotions and unacknowledged by himself. So far as he was concerned, she had the right to do as she had done, and she had fought fair, and so he had no reason to be angry or resentful about his defeat. From someone usually so perceptive, this blindness disturbed her, but not enough to poke at it. Not that season. Day by day, he sat and stared, or obeyed orders. Supper usually appeared on the table, though his experiments with new recipes ceased, as did, indeed, his interest in making anything particularly complicated. He went out with Worry, when she told him to, or, now and again, with Fefinum. 

Fefinum had come back to Red Beams House when the Grasshopper engines came out of the trainsheds, and keeping her fed was a difficult as ever, but Swallow had less time to give to the project. As her powers grew, so did her responsibilities at the Lodges and the heyimas. If Fefinum had work on a day Swallow needed to be elsewhere, Xellos went with her. When summoned by the Water Art, he went. He would weed the garden, if Garlic or Swallow came with him. He would copulate with her, if she initiated things, though she felt like it less often that winter than previously; the sense of risk, of gamesmanship, had gone out of that part of their lives, a little. And all the time, the power flowed, and the heaviness of his depression was like the weight on a fishing line, holding her steady in the current.

At the same time, the ordinary life of the valley was going on, largely unconcerned with two private souls' worth of trouble, but much occupied with troubles of other sorts. This was a dark, wet year of the kind that often followed an unusually hot, dry one. The first heavy rains started almost before the Wine was danced, and even the fine days began in rolling fog. The grain harvests were meager that year, except for the acorns, and the mushrooms unusually abundant. People adapted menus accordingly and talked about other wet years. But then the next blow hit, a more complicated one.

The cats had a plague among them. Feline distemper: an illness that came around to the valley maybe five or six times in a human's lifetime. Women and adolescent girls who had come into the Blood Lodge all carried knives or heavy sticks with them, so that they could dispatch the town cats at need, and the Blood Lodge and the hunters had careful talks about the wild population. Swallow put down so many feral cats with hollow eyes and bleeding rectums that she grew to recognize the shape of the disease with her four-house senses as well. She started, quietly, putting down the ones that were carriers, or just beginning to be ill. She didn't much like the killing, but using some of the power Xellos kept pouring into her was a relief. (She almost never let the washing machines run themselves any more, heating and churning the water and the muddy clothes herself, with nothing but magic. Xellos pointed out from time to time that there were efficient cleaning spells that would not leave her well so drained. That was not the point.)

Chulkumas could cope with the sick cats. More worrying was the question of who would tend to the cats' duties. The rainy season was a bad time for a distemper outbreak (not that there was ever a particularly good one) because fewer of the other small-creature predators could do much more than they were already doing. Everyone had had their babies for the year and the weaker ones had probably already been culled; the swelling ranks of the rodent family would not, this year, feed additional owlets. The kingsnakes and the larger lizards were torpid and lazy in the cooler temperatures. Also, in the rainy season much of the food was stored indoors, in barns or the heyimas, places where few of the predators other than the cats were welcome. Members of the Potters' Art were making lots of big heavy storage jars with lids. The Smiths fashioned traps and cursed the dormant state of the Exchanges. Swallow, filling the Red Beams bean crock at the main Serpentine food barn, watched rapid, furry shadows zip away from her, or worse, ignore her entirely, and wondered if it would be enough.

“Over there across the mountains in Loklatso,” she fretted to Hazelnut's mother Keepword, “they had this happen with rabbits. Something killed a lot of the coyotes and the wild bush rabbits got so bad they crowded the sheep, even. They grazed the meadows down into dust until nobody wanted to grow there but thistles and cactus.”

“Since when do you let yourself make that kind of world in your head?” Keepword laughed, dismissive. “Once the cats stop dying we'll bring in some extra ones from down the valley. The distemper hasn't reached Ounmalin yet. It's not even very bad in Chumo.” But Swallow could feel something, a balance point tipping. She could not tell if this feeling came from her new powers or her old memories – the two were merging, more and more. But the fleas on the rats, like the squirrels in the woods, sometimes carried other kinds of plagues, ones that humans could die of. And this was a hard, wet year when people were already not well. Swallow took herself back home to Red Beams and fretted to Xellos instead, while he sharpened his ax-like kitchen cleaver to papercut sharpness. She didn't suppose he'd care very much, but at least he wouldn't contradict her.

To her surprise, though, Xellos;’face took on the look that meant that he was concentrating, and the whetstone and blade crossed each other more and more slowly. When Swallow had done, he looked up at her, meeting her eyes for once. “Well, Swallow,” he said, “What do you mean to do about it?”

She didn't answer him, right then, and he didn't press her, but that question, coming out of that mouth, meant something different than the same one coming from Keepword or Shining. He was not inviting her to bring an idea up for discussion and approval. _The way to arrange it is to do it. They don't have the power to stop you._ That was a large thought, and it took most of a day for Swallow to work her way around it. There were matters of consent and responsibility to consider. Did Doctors' rules apply, where the one being brought in must consent to the choice of treatment, or was it more like one of the Arts, where one asked for something to be done but left the how to the practitioner? And if she took on the full responsibility of action, what, exactly, could she do? This was more than ending the suffering of a few stray cats. And what side effects would it have? Swallow thought and cleaned, thought and gardened. At last she sighed, put her hoe back in the shed, and sighed again. Worry whined at her and offered up his favorite rope knot for a game of tug. Swallow scratched his ears, “Come on, Worry,” she said, “Let's go kill some more people.” And then she squared her shoulders, went to face Xellos' sharp, white, new-moon grin, and asked him about the Zelas Brid. 

*****

She chose a time near midday for her assault on the rats and mice; whatever doubts she might have about her own actions, she would not compound them with secrecy. She wore her heyimas vest and carried a drum, and as she shaped her power to call the rats and mice out of the Serpentine grain shed and into the Common Place, she sang. It was a Hunter sort of song, a Blue Clay song; not really her territory at all, but it was needful. The humans of Chulkumas and the essence of Rodenthood in the Five Houses would know why she did this thing.

_Today the Bear is wearing ratskin,_ she sang.  
 _Today, rain falls with skittering feet_  
 _And hides in corners._  
 _Today death hides in dust, in mouseholes,_  
 _In sacks of grain._  
 _You know you are not welcome here, come out!_  
 _Come out, rats, come out!_  
 _Come out, mice, come out!_  
 _If you bring the Bear into my house,_  
 _You must feed her!_  
 _Today the rats must meet the bear._  
 _The rats must learn to wear a bearskin._

First, a wave of power through the barn itself. The little four-legged people living there would hear it as a high whine, a warning, a smell of smoke. Swallow didn't bother opening the barn door. They doubtless had other ways of coming in and out. She stretched her senses, trying to recognize the exit points for what they were, waiting for the first quick shadows among the new grass or the fallen leaves. Worry stood beside her, quivering. They came out like streams of gray-brown smoke, from corners and holes. Hundreds of them! Swallow blinked in surprise. She hadn't realized how bad it was getting. 

Worry sprang away from her with a delighted bark and tore through the fleeing stream of them, snapping at the rats, grabbing one and then another to shake it into limpness, then moving on to the next in a murderous canine ecstasy. Swallow, more methodical, drew curving lines of power, low to the ground, at the outer edge of the rodent exodus, transforming dozens of tiny, bright-eyed creatures to warm, limp smears of mud-colored fur. A choking scent of mouse urine rose in the damp air. Several more dogs and a few of the healthy cats joined Worry in the hunt, playing happily among the mouse deaths.

Swallow let her power go again and returned her attention to the houses of earth. She stood blinking, breathing hard. She had brought a shovel and a garden trug with her, to scoop up the little corpses and haul them off to Buzzard Hill. She should get started on that. She looked around herself, trying to remember where she'd put the shovel. Before she found it, Swallow's eyes met those of Live Oak, a ponderous, square woman of some fifty years, Speaker of the Serpentine in Chulkumas for ten of them. Live Oak gave Swallow a hard stare, then looked significantly around the blood-spattered mud of Common Place. “Is this your doing?” she asked.

Swallow nodded, tense, and began to try to explain. “I could feel the balance going wrong, and I thought, if I started with the barns... I can do the other barns too, maybe not the houses, and of course I could try the fields but I didn't want to accidentally do anything to the crops, and anyway the hawks and people like that can come into the fields, so-”

Live Oak held up a hand. “Be easy,” she said. “I am not here to chastise you.”

Swallow blew out a breath she didn't remember taking in. “Do you think I acted well, then?”

Live Oak shrugged. “You know the story of the woman who thought it was good luck when she found gold in the stream, until the Condor men came to take it from her, which she thought was bad luck, until they gave her four horses in payment, which she thought was good luck until the horses trampled her field.... I think you acted mindfully, which is the best any of us can do.”

Swallow bowed in gratitude, one hand on her collarbone. “I'd better start cleaning up, though,” she said. 

Live Oak took hold of the shovel before Swallow could reach it. “I'll help,” said the Speaker.

 

******

 

“I'm sorry,” Xellos told Reedbed as they surveyed the collapsed irrigation ditch. “I must not have been attending. I won't make the same mistake again.” And he wouldn't. Even in the strange, hollow place he found himself in now, bereft and bereft again, Xellos was disinclined to sulk. He couldn't afford to be so wasteful. And the body was in the habit of activity now, and got twitchy if he sat around all day. Or perhaps his returning energy was a sort of backhanded gift from Swallow, trying her hand at pest control 'round about the town and dulling the edge of his grief as she drew on her power. He doubted either of them really wanted to examine the exact nature of that exchange too closely. He even tried not to get too smug about Swallow finally buckling down and learning the Zelas Brid. She might decide he needed squashing... his mind was wandering again.

Reedbed shook her head. “The trouble with you, Northeast Eel, is that you joined the Water Art without learning the first songs. You keep trying to make Water into a machine, instead of learning how to work together with it. I'm not putting you out on any more jobs until you've sat through at least a season of instruction with the Blue Clay children – really attending, not just sitting in now and then. It's not all water songs, but the rest of it will do you good as well.”

Xellos bowed his acquiescence. It certainly didn't matter to him what he did. Listening to children's songs would be no duller than digging ditches.

In fact, he eventually got quite a bit of entertainment out of it. Xellos had not had much to do with children before, unless one counted Lord Hellmaster, and when he didn't wish to attend to Giver Singing Deer's lessons, he and the Blue Clay young fry amused each other greatly. Children between the ages of seven and thirteen or so shared with Xellos a taste for malicious compliance with scholarly edicts, and he won several new allies (of somewhat dubious use, but one never knew) from his habit of singing the learning songs a perfect third above or below the melody, with an occasional bluesy wobble. Valley music did not contain close harmonies, preferring canon, counterpoint, and lots of open fifths, so Xellos' improvisations impressed his audience as being strange and grating. Sometimes the group would try to adjust up or down to fit around him, and he, too, would adjust. Sometimes the song would slide down half an octave between one verse and the next, that way. After a while, they stopped trying to bring him along and just sang louder. He kept at it assiduously, and by the time the White Clowns were stalking the foggy fields again, one or two of the sharper-eared children were copying him, while several of the others held their ears and giggled. Giver Singing Deer merely sighed and worked doubly hard at drilling the gigglers in the lyrics of the teaching songs.

One of the other lessons caught Xellos' fancy, unexpectedly. “Let's make some maps today,” Singing Deer directed her charges. The Kesh were much given to mapmaking in general, it seemed to Xellos. Elaborately decorated maps hung on walls far more often than portraits did. Most of the Finders' Lodge wore necklaces like Swallow's, with talismanic maps carved on bone or inscribed on oiled paper and carefully coiled into a sealed cedar box. Crude painted maps decorated the sides of wagons. Most of the children had made maps before, but Singing Deer gave them a precise lesson in the conventions: How to draw to scale and indicate the scale, what kind of things to include in a key. How to indicate north. The poles for a Valley map were the head and mouth of the nearest body of moving water; if one were going to draw a map of Chulkumas and then zoom in only to the Southeast arm of the town, the whole orientation of the map would shift to accommodate Fern creek rather than the Na river. Xellos felt quite competent in the relevant mathematical principles already, and considered what he would do to make this assignment interesting. 

He hadn't come up with anything by the time he met Swallow in the horse barn that evening. She rubbed Fefinum down and milked the goat while Xellos poked about in the straw rick to see if the most wayward of the hens had hidden her eggs there again. “How do you use maps, Swallow?” he asked.

Swallow set her hands on her lower back and stretched. “To find things, of course. What else? The maps from the Exchange help us find other towns, or safe routes around the poisoned areas, or stores of metal or metal ore.”

Xellos cocked his head. “I thought the Valley was not terribly keen on finding things. Isn't that why your mother disapproves of you? But you all do seem to like your maps.”

Swallow thought about this while she filled Fefinum's feed rack again and sprinkled salt into her grain. “I guess that's true,” she admitted after a while, “But I still think maps are for finding things and seeing what is there. When you and the children bring the maps back to the heyimas in a day or two, Singing Deer will point out that everyone made slightly different choices about what to include and what to leave out, and she'll say something about learning to see a place clearly. We map the places we know to make sure we still see them. Ignoring the familiar can be a dangerous kind of unmindfulness.”

“I see.” Xellos pondered a while longer. That evening he borrowed Swallow's travel journal and flipped through the pages. There were little sketched maps here and there within it, but if he'd been doing a journey cold, Xellos thought the written notes would have been a much more valuable tool than a few doodles telling you where the river was. _Ask for Growing of the Copper Snake people. Be sure and flatter him about how fat his himpi are,_ said one note about the town of Stoy. How did you put that on a map? With a smirk of glee, Xellos decided to try.

******

The next day he showed off his carefully researched result to a very confused Singing Deer and a herd of Blue Clay children. “This is also a map of Chulkumas,” Xellos told them. “The squares are places where you can trade different kinds of goods: Black for Obsidian things like wool and cheese and glass, Yellow for Yellow Adobe things like wine and furniture, and so on. The larger the square, the richer they are and the more they have to give or trade. That big green square is the oak Deep-Towering, for instance. And then these brown lines are the way the giving flows between households. So Deep-Towering has lines to the households who gather acorns there. You can see Red Beams and Was A Mill and Under the Doves house all trade back and forth a lot. And Fireweed Blooms by the Corner trades with almost everyone _except_ those three.” 

Singing Deer laughed a little. Waterstrider's one-sided feud with Swallow and her friends was still a source of amusement to some people in the town.

Five Steps, a solemn, stodgy boy who could usually be counted on to object to Xellos' point of view, objected: “Under the Doves House is Red Adobe people. Not Obsidian. And it's bigger than Was a Mill house” 

“But the people at Under the Doves don't give out their corn stores. They do sell cheese, though, and leather. And Was a Mill is a rich family. Their square is bigger because they give more.”

Five Steps accepted this with a cautious nod. Singing Deer frowned a little and took a deep breath. “That was very clever, nephew,” the lecture began, “and carefully thought-out, but what you did with that map is very dangerous. Giving flows and changes. It is not appropriate to fix it down on paper, just as we do not write the words to certain songs. Suppose,” Singing Deer said to the class at large, “Someone who did not know Waterstrider looked at this map and decided that nobody at all should talk with the people at Red Beams House? Suppose Waterstrider herself would like to give up her fight, but won't because everyone knows about it now? That is why we map the Five Houses that stand, not the Four that flow.”

“The Falares people map ocean currents,” Xellos objected mildly.

“That's the islanders. This is the Valley. Cats may be green somewhere else, but the cats here don't care.” Having put him in his place, Singing Deer dismissed Xellos and his dangerous map and went on with the prepared lesson, which was, ironically, reading Tok – the language of the City of Mind, which could and doubtless would map absolutely everything, including economies and grudges. Xellos left the heyimas in a resentful mood. He had enjoyed coming up with that map. He'd been proud of himself for remembering the oak tree and the hunting grounds as well as the human households. Making the map had been an almost astral exercise in existing on a different plane... the thought led to others. 

All maps were ways of seeing, Swallow had said, and of being mindful. Those sketchy maps of home the Finders carried were meant to help the mind travel in beloved places... Xellos stopped in his tracks halfway across the Common Place and swerved abruptly to the left. He was going to the Oak Society workshop, for more paper, ink, and a whole set of brushes. Singing Deer wanted a map of home, did she? Well, he would make one that flowed like any river. He would depict everything he knew about the dynamic, everchanging, eternal geography of Wolf Pack Island: a map of the Wind's house. Someday, Swallow would have a use for it, maybe, if she ever stopped clinging so hard to her Valley taboos. And if not, his mind at least could go home for as long as he worked on it.

*****

The rainy season dragged on. This year, there was little novelty in the preparations for the Sun wakwa, and none in the interactions of the people of Chulkumas. Whatever influence he still had over Swallow seemed paltry in the wake of what he had lost. Only his beleaguered sense of duty kept him at his task of trying to turn her toward the Dark Lord. And he no longer knew if the movements she did make in that direction were true change, or merely steps in what she called “the dance.” The heyiya-if. The hinged double-spiral that had changed the very poles of the earth without changing anything at all. Swallow and Garlic continued to treat him with unhelpful gentleness. Though they reminded him of chores that needed doing, and Swallow dragged him outdoors every few days to help her with heavy tasks, neither pressed him very hard if he simply snarled himself up in the blankets and stayed in the sleeping closet until noon. He almost wanted to berate them for their poor sense of strategy. _This is not the way to treat a defeated enemy!_ He wanted to tell them. _Keep them too busy to think! Make them fear you! Break their spirits before they rebel!_

But Swallow continued to pull him in only when necessary, and speak of “remaking your soul.” She treated his mad project of mapping Wolfpack Island and the surrounding bits of the Sea of Chaos with respect and solicitude, using her Finders' skills to obtain paper and ink in astounding quantities, listening when he felt the need to think out loud, asking the occasional question about the results, remaining silent about the amount of lamp oil he managed to get through when he got too absorbed in completing a section to go to sleep. 

Perhaps, Xellos hypothesized, this was the exaggerated human enthusiasm for any act of making. Garlic actually referred to the project as “your creation,” once, to Xellos' offense. He was not creating anything. He was depicting something that existed, and it was very difficult. The map of the realm of chaos needed to be able to shift. Xellos had a set of paper cards, the paper treated somehow with white clay in a way that made it stiff and shiny. The cards were of irregular shapes that nonetheless butted up against each other, each one marked on one side with the figures of the map and on the other side, in nearly equal density, with symbols that specified the circumstances in which this card, not another, must sit in a particular spot in the map frame. Xellos made no attempt to depict physical geography at all; it was too changeable and unimportant. Instead he mapped rivalries, alliances, chains of command, talismans. It might look like tangles and swirls from a distance, but if one looked close the tangles and swirls were made of repeating geometric patterns, and one could, given a year or fifty, learn to read them. And for as long as Xellos worked on the map, he could let his mind be there, instead of where he was.

Swallow grew more and more involved with the Doctors' Lodge, a choice that Xellos found a little confusing. She wasn't earning nearly as much in the way of either goods or prestige as she could even as a day laborer – she had missed too many years of training to be given any of the really important songs or techniques. Still, she joined the Lodge _wakwade_ every few days, and accepted those cases she was given – mostly simple cancers that could be surgically (or magically) removed, together with the occasional abortion. She asked to assist in hospice cases and was told bluntly that her usual energy level was keyed too high and restless for the work. Swallow accepted the judgment humbly but kept going back to the lodge. She still met with the Finders, too, mostly about how to maintain long-distance trading relations in the absence of the Exchange, and to talk through likely hiccups when the machines of the City of Mind finished rebuilding and the exchanges came to life again. 

A few days past the end of the Sun, she came back from one of these meetings cast down and glum. “Sage of the Red Adobe died last night,” she informed Xellos. “Quite suddenly, from something like a stroke or a heart attack; we're not quite sure what since no one else was there at the time.”

Xellos wiped his brush on the corner of the ink pot and set it on his blotter, and picked up a copper tool he used for scoring designs into the card. The process wasn't quite engraving, but did make for sharper lines than simple drawing. “Do I know Sage?” he asked.

“I doubt it.” Swallow rummaged a bit listlessly through the condiments on the pantry shelf, trying to find something new and interesting to do with acorn flour, venison broth, and squash. “He used to go out with the Finders, but he retired and now he mostly makes – made – baskets and looked after his family's himpi.”

Xellos ran his scoring tool along a metal straightedge, dividing an irregular blob into a grid, the corners of which would be marked with little target shapes. “Well,” he said, “humans die.” Swallow said nothing, merely switched the stove on and took one of the squashes out to the yard to split it on the chopping block.

Swallow and Garlic continued melancholy over supper. Neither had known the dead man well, it seemed, but both had known him slightly, and both brooded over the reminders of mortality. “It'll be my turn sooner than later,” Garlic said. “I'm planning to learn with the Black Adobe lodge again this year.” Swallow nodded. Xellos grew impatient with the bland, mealy sweetness of depression and reached across the table for the pepper flakes.

Swallow reached for him, that night, rubbing her cheek against his chest like a cat. They came together slowly, with less urgency than sometimes, and Xellos focused on the straightforward physical skills involved, not expecting to be carried away, until he was. _Bodies._ Perhaps Swallow was trying to drug herself with sex. It worked, if so, and she took him with her; desire resonating with desire, warming as it moved until orgasm came as a flashover, a purge of piercing, thorough heat. His first few breaths afterward seemed cleaner and sharper, as if his lungs and all the rest of him had been scrubbed out with lye soap.

“Thank you, _giyakwunshe,_ ” Swallow said, hugging him once again before she settled back on her sleeping mat.

“You are most welcome,” Xellos answered automatically. He had not, this time, come anywhere near the core of magic she carried, but he felt remarkably cheerful. The muscles were relaxed, the nerves picked up on the world around them with clarity. The familiarity of the effect did not render it unwelcome. It had indeed been a long rainy season, with everyone wandering in a fog of depression even before Sage's death gave an excuse for it. He'd missed the... _Wait. What am I thinking?_ Had he really been trying to make Swallow _happy?_ Had he developed a taste for pepper? Not a tolerance but an actual craving? _I need to think about this one. No. I need NOT to think about this one. It's not right. It's..._ Swallow was more than half asleep, and Garlic's snores echoed from the next room. Xellos stood up and padded out the door and then out of Red Beams House, letting the cold mud of the Common Place shock his bare feet as he walked. He'd paced the length of the dark, sleepy town, from the Tanner's lodge to the Yellow Adobe Heyimas, some five or six times, before he calmed down enough to rinse his feet off and seek his own sleeping mat for the night.

 

*****

 

Early plowing in a wet year was a misery second only to childbirth. At the end of each row, Swallow and Fefinum stopped and rested for a few minutes. Swallow drank water from her canteen, Fefinum from the irrigation ditch. They both ate some dried apple, supplemented in Fefinum's case with khosa weed, the juiciest thing to grow here in the untended ground. Swallow called up a little, cool wind for them both, rolled her shoulders, and tried to prepare herself for more plowing. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she was going to make Xellos leave the map he was making of his own lost mind and take over out here, and she was going to borrow Copper Bell's life story out of the Madrone Lodge library again and spend the day keeping mice away from the drying racks. It would do him good to get some more exercise. The map worried her, honestly; the minuscule patterns reminded her of the sort of thing Hempseed drew after an ergot trip; moongazer art, where everything had to be important at once. It would be good for Xellos to get outside, and it would do her good not to. 

Voices sounded behind her – Deft, of the Doctor's Lodge, and another woman. “She's there,” Deft was saying, “With the mule. So you are here, Swallow!”

Swallow turned. Deft's companion was a hollow-eyed, anxious woman whose name she didn't know, though Swallow had seen her dancing the deer-hoof music at the Water, so she must be Blue Clay. “So you are here Deft, so you are here, Blue Clay woman! Were you looking for me?”

“This is Spotted Ewe,” Deft said, gesturing toward the woman at her side. “Her son needs your third eye. Can you picket Fefinum for a bit and come to the Lodge?”

Pearseed was having headaches, and flashing visions that sometimes led to seizures. The illness was clearly in his brain, but whether it was epilepsy or a tumor or some other thing, the Doctors weren't sure. Spotted Ewe looked similarly uncertain of Swallow. The best doctors were not usually the ones to be found out plowing, her look said. Nor the ones who'd spent their adolescent years going out with the Finders. But she was worried about Pearseed, and this disreputable Finder had a heyiya-if branded on her cheek. Spotted Ewe helped Swallow unhitch Fefinum and set up the picket line. Swallow, all sweaty as she was, stopped at the Hinge Well and splashed herself down before following Deft and Spotted Ewe into the Lodge, where she washed more thoroughly, wound her hair up in a knot and then covered the knot with a knitted bandage, in hopes it would stay put a little longer, and then went down the steps to the underground bringing-in chamber.

Pearseed was in the middle of his sprouting years – nine or so. He hunched in a patients' robe, making it look too big for him even though it wasn't, and picked at a loose thread in the hem. He sat in the middle of one of the simplest possible floor patterns: a two-line heyiya-if made of yellow cornmeal and charcoal. Swallow took a breath through her teeth and resisted hugging herself against the icy miasma of fear in the room. There was too much there to recognize a source; Spotted Ewe, or her son, or both... “So you are here, Pearseed.” The boy looked up as she spoke to him, then winced away from the light that fell on his face. The chamber had only one lamp burning – not nearly enough for a normal medical examination. Well, that was all right. Swallow felt her scar warm against the chill as she began to call on her own power. “It is indeed a tumor,” she said at once. “A little bigger than a green walnut, and pressing into the part of your brain that talks with your eyes.” 

Pearseed nodded grimly. Spotted Ewe bit back a sob.

“Can you see how fast it's growing?” Deft asked.

“Fast. It's one of the hungry ones.”

Deft blew out a breath and emitted an aura of settling in. “We have to make some big choices quickly, then, Pearseed, Spotted Ewe.” She took the boy's mother by the elbow and led her around the spiral to sit next to her son at the hinge. Pearseed crept into his mother's lap, leaning back into her clutching arms.

“We can do surgery, and see if we can take it out. We'd need to cut a door in your skull, Pearseed, and go down through your brain to where the tumor is hiding. It won't hurt much; you'll have drugs, and we'll put you in a trance, but the healing afterward will hurt. There is danger that you will die – always, when we do surgery, that is a danger. There is danger that you will be blinded, if the wrong part of your brain is harmed when we take the tumor out. There is danger that the tumor will return anyway. But your other choice is to begin learning how to die.”

“No!” cried Pearseed, and he squirmed around, turning his face away from Deft to bury it in Spotted Ewe's neck, hugging his mother back at last.

“What are you saying no to, Pearseed? To the surgery, or the dying? I hope you want to live,” Deft said gently, “I know you are very brave.” 

Spotted Ewe stroked Pearseed’s back. The boy curled further in on himself and said “no,” again.

Swallow chewed on her lip and reached up to twist a curl of hair, then remembered she had put her hair up. She knew Deft. The older doctor was a gifted surgeon. She could, most likely, remove all of the malignant growth and leave Pearseed free of it. She was careful; there wouldn't be any infection. She was a woman of strength and grace, who could bear Pearseed's life-debt with strength and grace; Spotted Ewe wouldn't mind sharing her motherly responsibilities with Deft. Swallow's scar tingled. She turned her thoughts the other way. “There is one other choice,” she said aloud, “If you can trust me.”

*****

Xellos passed Nine Birches Pastures on his way back from fixing a pump in the wash house and noted with surprise that Fefinum was there, sunning herself and munching on a few weeds. Hadn't Swallow been going to take her to plow for someone today? Where was Swallow, anyway? Well, it was late in the afternoon; perhaps they'd knocked off early. He checked the bond, looking for her current location and mood, and got a surprise on both counts. She was in the Southeast Arm of the town, where none of her friends lived, unless she'd made a new one (not unlikely, really.) Her mood was... nothing. Neither happy nor sad nor anything else- she might not have been present in her mind at all. Well, that's odd... He continued back toward Red Beams House. It was Garlic's turn to cook supper, but the old man needed reminding sometimes. And he wanted some mint tea before he went out to the gardens. 

He'd just passed the Madrone Lodge library when the roil hit him. It knocked the air out of his lungs, made his joints wobbly for an instant, and then smoothed out so that he could steady himself again. Xellos straightened out of his crouch and patted Worry, who had come up and was looking quizzically at him. That hadn't been an earthquake, had it? No one else seemed to have taken any notice. A mourning dove cooed. Still, Xellos' heart was pounding. No. It wasn't. Swallow's heart was pounding, and he was feeling the echo of it. Just what had happened? Nothing as straightforward as that incident at the Moon wakwa a year or so back; she wasn't upset enough. Or rather, the emotions were just as powerful but much more mixed. Xellos followed the pull of the bond and found himself outside the Doctors' Lodge. He should have guessed. Swallow, Deft, and a woman and child that he couldn't immediately put names to were all standing on the Lodge porch, hugging and weeping on each other's shoulders. The mother and the boy peeled themselves away first, crying “thank you, thank you, my word is grateful, Giver!” 

Deft patted Swallow on the shoulder and told her, “Go sit for a while. Sing the Willow Gyre. Or have some cider and a nap.” She looked up and spotted Xellos. “She's drained herself just about dry, nephew. Take her home, if you will.” He nodded, offering an elbow to Swallow, who didn't take it but did fall into step beside him. Worry pressed his nose against her hand.

“What was that all about?” Xellos asked her, “Or can you not tell me?”

Swallow made a quick, breathy, “Oh!” sound, and then took a longer, shakier in-breath and let it out again. “Spotted- Spotted Ewe is truly a generous woman,” she said. “Her boy Pearseed there had a tumor, and I was able to use my four-house powers to get rid of it. It was a bad one, but Deft or one of the other handling Doctors could have cut it out if I hadn't been there... Anyway, she's promised us a load of hay for Fefinum and a new patient robe for the Lodge. And a dance cloak and a set of leather gloves and pretty much the Moon and Planet Kemel, too... not that I'm about to hold her to all of that! She's so very happy and relieved; but more than that-” Swallow took another breath and wiped her eyes. “She gave me a name! My Lodge name, I suppose it will be. She called me Giver Toudou.”

Xellos looked at his _giyakwunshe._ “Did she now?” No wonder Swallow was worked up. That would have gotten her right in her insecure, acceptance-craving gut. And then he thought about the name she had been given, and he had to meet her joyful tears with his own rueful laughter, because it was simultaneously horrible and perfect. _Toudou_ was just about the Keshiest possible Kesh name. In no other language Xellos was aware of did anyone think it necessary to have a word that meant “The path water takes over a mill-wheel.” The Kesh did. In the Kesh system, the wheel and the machine were, though necessary, corrupt, and nothing was more sacred than water. So _toudou_ was the open loop, the path water took through the machine: as close to damnation as one could travel and still come away clean. It encapsulated almost everything about Swallow that Xellos had resisted, rebelled against, or tried to change, beginning with his first campaign to get her out of the valley. “And I thought Spotted Ewe didn't know you well,” he said aloud. Swallow laughed.


	22. The Children of Tachas Touchas

Just after the World wakwa, Swallow got a letter from Agate and, as a result, packed up Xellos, Fefinum, and a satchel of small gifts, and took them all down the valley to stay in Tachas Touchas for a while. She organized the handoff of her few patients to other people in the Doctors' Lodge, instructed Garlic and Worry to look after each other, and asked Hazelnut and Keepword to keep an eye on both of them. Xellos, carefully turning the Map and its frame and his notes and the unused pieces of cardstock into a tidy package that would not get bent out of shape on a mule ride, happened on the letter that had caused all the fuss, sitting in the scrap paper bin, and read it. The way it was phrased: mostly talking about the Planting Lodge and the need for a mule, made it sound like Fefinum was the guest of honor, not Swallow, a fact that bothered her not at all when Xellos pointed it out.

“You know Agate, she's too proud to tell me she misses me, and right now I expect she's angry we stayed up here and not with her for the Sun.”

“In which case, she is likely to make our visit a bit unpleasant, is she not?”

“So?”

Human loyalty was such an odd, squishy thing, Xellos thought. Nothing like the adamantine Mazoku version, or even the wrought-iron certainty of dogs. Swallow's loyalty was as easily diverted, as easily shaken, and as ultimately unstoppable as the Na river. As with Lina-san before her, it had taken him a little time to recognize it for what it was, and a longer one to decide whether he approved of it. He thought, though, that some form of that loyalty included him. As terrible a decision as that was for Swallow strategically speaking, he was, on the whole, grateful.

So they all went to Tachas Touchas, and stayed in Five Toads House. Little had changed. Cousin Jayfeather upstairs had finally found her second name and was called Morning Glory now. Baby Plenty had become somewhat less noisy but quite a bit more mobile, leading to significant net gains in overall troublemaking ability. Swallow apologized to Bounce for not having been there at Sunreturn to receive her gift seedling when he had it all decorated, and followed him out to the place it had been planted afterward to make admiring noises. Xellos, to his surprise, had to do the same thing; Bounce had selected an oak for Swallow and a buckeye for him: generous providers of poisonous and prickly fruit, buckeyes were. Fair enough. Pond continued self-effacing, Agate continued stern, Adsevin remained kind within the increasingly stretched limits of her increasingly busy life. Swallow patiently corrected anyone who called Xellos her husband. They had not danced the Second Night of the World, she told them, and probably wouldn't for some time, if ever. “We are as we are because we have to be,” she repeated to anyone who got nosy, “but getting married is a choice.” 

It was Swallow's choice, though she maintained it was Xellos'. He had asked her, before the World, if she wanted to, and she'd told him, “not until you're through fighting that war of yours.” In other words, never. Xellos didn't greatly care either way. Human marriage, to him, meant an arrangement of shared time, property, and, usually, bodily fluids. If Swallow had idealistic notions about what else had to be shared, she didn't have to call herself married. Not unless they left the valley and went somewhere with different rules, and he had more or less given up on that particular campaign. If restless Swallow, “a Finder through and through” was trying to make herself over into a hospice nurse after more than a year of him trying to push her out of the nest, then the only chance he had of making that set of plans work was to ease off the pressure. And if they stayed in the valley, well, he'd think of something. He had to. He had to try, to the limits of his ability, to redeem his error in the matter of the City of Mind, before Lord Beastmaster returned to consume his soul. His great sacrifice had been for nothing. He could not afford to waste the small ones he had left.

Meanwhile, Tachas Touchas. As before, Swallow eased herself into the routines of Five Toads House as if she had never been away, though the balance of indoor and outdoor work had to adjust somewhat to allow Swallow to continue her Doctors' studies. Xellos took somewhat less of the housework than previously, dividing the extra time between the fields, with Fefinum, and the Blue Clay heyimas, where he continued attending lessons and baiting the teacher. Iris of Tachas Touchas proved to be more combustible than Singing Deer of Chulkumas. By his fourth day of classes, she had forbidden him to open his mouth. Or hum. He was certainly learning the Water songs, though, whether it actually made him a better plumber and reservoir keeper or not. 

He gathered that Swallow had a similar adjustment period to go through with her Lodge teachers. To his not-surprise, Swallow's return to the Doctors' Lodge gained her only limited approval from Agate. Swallow, according to Agate, was Doing it Wrong. Having the 'third eye,' as she called it, was a useful tool, but shouldn't become a crutch. Swallow had come late to the Lodge (ignoring the work she'd done there before she joined the Finders, ignoring the studies in Klatsaand) and should spend less time out in the fields and more time learning the songs. Given that the last two times they had been in Tachas Touchas, Agate had been after Swallow to make more use of her astral senses, Xellos thought this was a bit much, and said so. “I, for one,” he interrupted one lecture, “believe she would be better served by relying to a greater degree on her third eye, as you call it, because that is a gift only she can give. Her talks with Zelgadis-san and Amelia-san about valley medicine look like they're going to lead to a revolution in at least four major branches of magic, back inside the old barrier. I can certainly imagine similar discoveries here resulting from the fusion of the two disciplines.”

Agate sniffed. “Your people are ignorant, then.” She ignored her family's startlement at this insult and went on. “Here in the valley, we've had both Doctors and visionaries for a long time.”

“You two stop picking at each other,” Adsevin said from the stove, “and one of you come take over beating this cream for the strawberry clown-clown. My arm's about to give out.” So Agate went over to help make dessert and Adsevin took her place. She and Swallow went into a long, sisterly confab about one of the gathering trees that Five Toads House used, and who in the Wood Art it would be best to consult about an invasion of tent caterpillars. Xellos retreated to the reading corner to work on the Map, still seething a little and wondering why he was; he had known this was coming, and so had Swallow, and besides, what did it matter to him what Swallow's mother thought of her?

Swallow accepted the situation with a sort of glum humor. When Xellos brought up the question of her mother to her, she answered with a lightness completely unsupported by her underlying mood. “This is how Agate cares for people. She tries to fix things. So my job is to be wrong and need correcting. It helps her feel useful. And when I want praise, I go to my aunt Eucalyptus upstairs, or I write to Keepword.” Xellos recognized the pattern as one that recurred among humans of certain dispositions. That Swallow, too, recognized it and had found a way to live with it in some peace put her among the lucky few. He shouldn't let it bother him, either; it wasn't his business to rescue her nor revenge her injuries. 

Unless, of course, Swallow made it his business. Tensions in the household rose again with coming of the Moon wakwa. Pond, as an Obsidian man, had ceremonial duties above and beyond those of most of the participants, which changed the balance of the household work. He and Adsevin were treating each other very carefully. Xellos wasn't quite sure whether Pond would be “dancing” with other women during the Moon or simply helping to keep order, like Hempseed back in Chulkumas, but Adsevin let it be known that she did not intend to dance until Plenty was done nursing. Agate offered no opinion about Adsevin and Pond, but the effort of holding back told on her, and she started fussing mightily over Swallow when Bridge offered her younger daughter a sei flower and Swallow tucked it in her hair. The gesture was, Xellos gathered, a common Lower Valley method for ascertaining a potential dancing partner's level of interest beforehand and obtaining specific, rather than general, consent. 

Agate did not like the idea of Swallow dancing at all. The Pig man got mentioned again. Swallow pointed out that the Pig man had not stopped her having a grand old time for the last ten years or so and Agate switched to wondering if Swallow might have picked up a case of fucksores while she'd been gallivanting around in foreign parts. Swallow threw up her hands and said if Agate couldn't keep her mind out of her daughter's cunt then maybe they should see about having a bringing-in, and refused to say anything at all – or stay in the same room – the next time Agate brought up the subject. Xellos didn't even need to fan the flames by mentioning Swallow's upsetting experience last year in Chulkumas, they were doing so well on their own. But then Swallow came to him with a surprising request.

“If I dance again this year,” she asked him in the quiet of their bedroom, “will you be an anchor for me, as you were last year?”

Xellos frowned a little. “I was a what? I don't recall doing much last year except staying out of your way, until things went bad, of course.”

“No, but you were,” Swallow insisted. “You were listening. Through the bond. Channel. Whatever it is. I could feel you feeling what I felt, just like the times when we have sex with each other. And even before the thing with Careful, there were a few moments where I wasn't quite... but I could reach out along the channel and feel your pleasure instead, and it was all right.”

“Oh.” Xellos pondered a moment or two, then grinned. “Well, I certainly have no objection to listening in again. I was doing it last year mostly for my own enjoyment. If you're getting something out of it, so much the better.”

“Thank you,” Swallow breathed. Xellos looked at her sharply. She was wound tighter than he would have expected. 

“Is this about, as you say, 'the thing with Careful?' ”

Swallow twined her fingers around a curl of hair, looking downward. “I... the Moon was never the easiest thing for me. I mean, I've had a lot of boyfriends, but only one at a time, and we could talk things out before fucking. The Moon- I started dancing the Moon after I felt like there were enough men dancing who knew me already to be... safe. Safer. The Moon is about trust and risk both.”

Xellos found himself imagining inventive revenges for Careful. The violation went quite a bit deeper than he'd realized. But then, Careful’s attack had been honorable, by Mazoku standards; he had neither lied nor broken any vow. So... Aloud, though, all Xellos said was, “I would be happy to anchor for you.”

And then of course, after all that, the Moon was entirely uneventful. Swallow danced the first, fourth, and eighth nights, and offered few details. Xellos considered himself to be under orders to focus on his own pleasure rather than worrying about hers, given what she'd said about his function last time, so if she had suffered any kind of anxiety he hadn't noticed. He did rather get the impression that she'd had more than one partner on most of the nights she danced, but that not all of them had been very skilled. Judging by the well-hidden emotional roil the morning after the fourth night, Xellos thought one of Swallow's partners might have been Pond, but there was nothing in either of their demeanors that Adsevin would need to attend to. Adsevin danced the ninth night of the Moon, when the orgy was over and they made a ceremony of return and reconciliation. Swallow did not, but she chose to sit next to Xellos at the worktable that evening and read while he worked on the Map, close enough together that their thighs touched. And when they combed each others' hair the next morning, they took longer than usual to finish the task. And then had to do it over again.

 

*****

Planting season trailed off into the growing season, for the most part. Swallow began to talk of going back to Chulkumas, “when the engines go back in,” by which she meant the start of the dry season proper, when the steam locomotives that pulled the Train would be temporarily replaced by mules, to prevent wildfires coming from stray sparks. Xellos understood from this that Fefinum would once again be leaving their household for the summer. No one in Five Toads seemed particularly surprised or upset by these plans, except for Bounce, who suddenly became clingy and started following Swallow around everywhere except the Doctors' Lodge, and begging Xellos to come crawdad hunting with him, and generally... hoarding his aunt and his uncle-for-now. The behavior piqued Xellos' curiosity. (Besides, the Map was behaving tiresomely; images that had seemed very clear in his head refused to translate to paper. Xellos wondered if this was some residual chaos magic leaking through via the Law of Similarity, or simply the way of art, and started thinking all over again about his criteria for what he chose to depict on the Map and what he left out.) Xellos chose to accept Bounce's invitations more often than not, and to nose about a bit and observe.

“That business of Agate fixing people to express her affection,” he asked Swallow after a few days of this, “Has someone explained it to Bounce? Because I think he might be Agate's choice for the next spotted goat of the family.” (Spotted goat, because this was the Na valley and black sheep were moderately sacred.)

Swallow sat up straight, her mending forgotten in her lap. “You think so?”

“Watch,” Xellos advised.

Swallow did watch, over several days, and she talked with Adsevin and Pond and the mothers of some of Bounce's friends. He was a good boy, everyone agreed. Mindful of his baby sister and the himpi and the dogs, of a kindly disposition, sometimes a little loud and rambunctious in the ways boys could be. When Swallow asked if there was any problem between the boy and his grandmother, Adsevin looked troubled and Pond a little grim. “She's sparing with her praise,” Adsevin admitted, “and we talk a lot to Bounce about how to... calibrate. I've been thinking about asking for a bringing-in.”

Cat Watching and Morning Glory, who watched Bounce from time to time, were both of the opinion that no bringing-in would help. “Adsevin and Pond should move out for a while. Maybe then Agate would learn how to not be so bossy all the time.” But then, both the girls wore the undyed clothing of adolescents; a certain rebelliousness was to be expected.

Swallow talked the whole thing over in the barn with Fefinum, whose patient neutrality was a distinct relief. Then she found a day that Adsevin and Pond were both out attending to other matters, found a reason to stay near Five Toads House, and watched. Or rather, she listened.. “Be quiet, Bounce, the baby is sleeping.” “Bounce, don't let Plenty get near the hot stove.” “Be careful when you pick her up!” Bounce had locked his arms around Plenty's ribcage and was carrying her with her feet dangling down, being too small himself to really manage to support her bottom. Plenty waved her legs serenely. “Share your toys.” “Don't let her chew on your toys, she'll get splinters...” Swallow stepped in where she could, and thought some more.

A few days after that, Agate opened her mouth to say something, but what came out was “Abbery Abbery babber-dab.” Bounce giggled, startled. Adsevin dropped the teakettle with a clang. Pond went very still.

“A stroke!” Adsevin cried. “Pond, get to the Doctors' Lodge! Help me, Swallow!” Swallow went to Agate, helped her sit on one of the bench chests, and stooped to keep looking her in the eye, face intent.

“Keep breathing, mother. I'm going to do a deep look and see if I can find the clot.” Agate nodded, shakily. Xellos watched Swallow's scar grow bright with power, watched tendrils of light branch away from the central spiral across her skin into the pattern of her spell. Which was not the deep look pattern. To say nothing of her strong, musty flavor of guilt, which put Xellos in mind of those horrible fermented milk solids the Kesh were so inexplicably fond of. A weight on his knees resolved itself into Bounce, seeking comfort from the one adult who wasn't busy at the moment. Xellos squeezed him absently. Adsevin started brewing willow bark tea. Swallow pulled away again, breathing harder. “All right, _momou_ ” she said, quietly and sadly. “The worst is over, I think. Now we all just have to learn how to go on from here. Can you hold up two fingers for me?”

Swallow took Agate through a litany of basic neurological tests, nodding at her upstairs neighbors and fellow doctors, Eucalyptus and Quill, as they came into the room and listened. It soon became clear that Agate had gotten off lightly. She could still move both sides of her body, she could still count. It seemed she could still understand what other people said, and could still read. Only when she tried to speak, or write, did the aphasia kick in. Agate looked at her tidy writing, neat letters spelling nonsense, and her face crumpled. “Oh, Maddery Baddery!” She balled up the scrap of cornhusk paper in one hand and threw it on the floor.

“Be easy,” soothed Eucalyptus. “Come with us to the Lodge for a while.” And they led the old woman – not so very old, really, but she looked old at that moment – away. Adsevin followed. Pond, who had returned to Five Toads House with the doctors, scooped up Bounce from Xellos' lap and murmured soothing words. 

Swallow cleared her throat. “I think maybe Xellos and I had better stay on through the Summer,” she said. “I'm not sure what we can do, really, but I'm sure there will be something.” Pond nodded over Bounce's head. “I guess for now I'd better go see to Fefinum, though,” Swallow said, and made her way out the door. Xellos followed her.

Once they were in the relative privacy of the horse barn, Xellos asked, _“Was_ it a stroke?”

Swallow looked at him. She opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again. “I hope,” she said finally, “that no one else thinks to ask that question. But if anyone does ask, then tell them yes, it was a stroke. I do not believe she is in danger of another one anytime soon, and I have hopes that she will be able to make a full recovery, given time and care.”

Xellos raised his eyebrows at this. Normally, Swallow was bluntly honest, or she lied with equal directness. This sort of roundaboution was... well, she was a Finder; she knew how to do it, but she usually didn't. It was usually much more Xellos' kind of thing. He considered for a while and then responded, equally obliquely. “While capable of doing so, I generally prefer not to disobey direct orders. And you did order me not to try to separate you from your people. In case you thought I might encourage people to start asking uncomfortable questions.”

Swallow kept her face neutral. “I'm glad to hear that.”

“And I do appreciate you not asking me to lie. I can tell anyone who asks that you said it was a stroke, and if I still have doubts about your veracity, well, that part is…. a secret.”

Swallow said nothing, merely clucked at Fefinum and guided her out of her stall and into the pasture.

Xellos smiled and followed. “If Agate's episode had been a matter of magical interference, I should now be showering the magician with extravagant praise. That spell – if it was a spell, I mean – would have been an absolute work of art.” Swallow turned away from him and headed back into the horse barn, where she grabbed a pitchfork and a barrow from the tack room. Xellos followed her, still prattling. “The _precision!”_ he marveled, “the _efficiency!_ Do you remember – of course you do – I offered to teach you, that first rainy season we spent in Tachas Touchas, how to curse your mother to silence. Well, that's an astral curse. It takes at least three times as much power as what you... as what, I theorize, would be required for an aphasia spell that mimicked a stroke. It opens a space in what you call the four houses and redirects the voice there. Doesn't do a thing about writing, either. But this: this is- would be- a simple disruption of … what? A few tiny electrical signals? It would take a fraction of the power of the other to maintain. And worlds more dexterity; which may be why nobody else has ever thought of such a thing. Nor did you, apparently, if, as you say, this was a stroke.”

Swallow continued as mute as her stricken mother, stabbing grimly at the straw in the stall with the pitchfork. Xellos stopped talking for a while and maneuvered the barrow a little to make it easier for Swallow to finish mucking out. She continued silent while she wheeled the full barrow over to the midden heap and back, washed the tools and put them away in the tack room. Xellos placed himself in front of her as she left it, and smiled down at her. “Swallow-chan, _giyakwunshe,_ I know your goals are not mine. But I tell you even so that I greatly value the deftness of your mind. You see things clearly, you understand what is important and what is not... you have an eye for the hinge-points, _binyez,_ and a gift for seeing the world anew.” 

Swallow simply looked up at him. Not glaring, listening. He reached out and ran one finger gently along the spiral graven in her cheek. “You surprise me, Swallow, over and over again. And very little does.”

The girl shivered a little at his touch, and looked down. “Brains are funny,” she said. “It would be much easier to destroy those few neurons than to block them. And Agate would still have a chance at recovering her words either way, because brains are like that. But a recovery would maybe be surer with magic.”

Xellos pulled Swallow up against himself and stroked her back, being careful to leave her arms untouched, because this was not the time to risk setting her off. “And you are generous, and you don't hold a grudge.” He stepped back again and held only her shoulders, pouting his lips out in an exaggerated moue. “Much to my dismay, often as not, but there it is.”

Swallow snorted laughter. She made to leave the barn, then stopped again. “Xellos,” she asked thoughtfully, “why did you call my attention to Agate and Bounce?”

Xellos leaned back against Fefinum's freshly-clean stall and put a confused look on his face. “You don't believe I was simply offended by the injustice of Bounce's treatment at his grandmother's hands?”

“I've seen you ignore a lot of other injustices, even when you liked the victim.”

“I have seen you ignore far fewer of them,” Xellos replied, “even when you don't much like the victim. Which is probably why Waterstrider is still alive and whining. I mentioned the situation with Bounce because I thought you might do something about it.” He stroked his chin. “I was thinking perhaps you'd ask me about that silencing curse, but that obviously didn't happen.” He grinned. 

Swallow grinned back. “I did do something about it: I invited Bounce to spend a season with us in Chulkumas sometime. Probably not this year, now.” She let her smile fall away to nothing and gave herself a shake. “I have work to do. Go find the Bay Laurel Boys if you want to play games.”

“I almost never disobey a direct order.” He swept her a bow and left.

 

******

In point of fact, Xellos thought he would not have been able to evade the Bay Laurel boys had he wanted to. When he first took up with them, he had been the most interesting thing to happen to the group of them in years, and when he and Swallow had left again, they had taken their memories and shared them amongst each other, and, as the Kesh said, made up the world. Swallow's-Man-Egret bore only a passing resemblance to Lieutenant Beastmaster Xellos Metallium, but he loomed large and bright in the minds of the boys, and maybe even the mind of Lodge Speaker Kingsnake. In the dazzled eyes of Stag and Mica and their friends (except for Hound, who had “come inland” with a Madidinou girl and left town back before the Wine,) the indignity and futility of the Carrion Gyre and subsequent events had become the acts of a hero – the familiar Teenage Boy God who took so many forms, but was always careless, insouciant, fearless, quick with a joke, and, to use an idiom at least two civilizations out of date, ‘a righteous badass’. They greeted Xellos with a blast of worshipful affection like a sudden noseful of chili-scented steam, eager to have him hear and approve their own triumphs and to tell them old stories of his adventures in faraway lands, or new stories about how he had said witty things to the stubborn old oak roots of Chulkumas. Xellos did not tell them, “you remind me of a fiancee I once had,” but they did, in fact, remind him strongly of Martina. She, too, had built a puppet-Xellos in her mind, and these boys, like her, would have been very upset had they truly comprehended his character. It was safer that way. The illusory nature of their affection lessened its impact.

Swallow just shook her head when he tried to explain. “You really can't take a gift, can you?” Which didn't make much sense to Xellos, but he didn't pursue it.

Stag wanted him to come see what they had done with the quarterstaff training since he'd been away. The pastime had caught on; even with Hound's defection, the number of boys who showed up in Touwats meadow had more than doubled: from four to nine, including two little fellows about Bounce's age. “We practice every day,” Stag assured him eagerly, and shouted to the other boys, “Let's get started, everyone!”

Xellos found a place slightly uphill of the practice ground to lounge and watch them. They went through their drills earnestly, the older boys showing off. They focused on those moves that displayed their athleticism: vaulting flips, spins. The hard, hollow staffs met with loud, satisfying clacking noises. Actual strategy, as opposed to vanity, did not factor in much at all. When the session turned to sparring, Xellos decided to teach them a lesson. He walked slowly down the slope, unarmed until he came to the first pair of sparring boys, at which point both boys found themselves abruptly disarmed and sitting on the ground. The other big boys turned, startled, and one or two of them made to attack. They joined their fellows on the dirt ten seconds later. Xellos dropped the last two lengths of bamboo on the ground and looked witheringly at his stunned and fallen students. “It seems you practice the _fun_ parts every day,” he said witheringly. The boys flinched like chidden hounds. 

Kingsnake intervened. “Listen, No-house Man,” he said, “we in the valley don't think it's appropriate for children to play at war. We save your kind of training for the times when we know trouble is coming. Because people want to use what they learn, you know, and they make the world they teach.”

“Puts you at rather a disadvantage when there is trouble, that kind of delay,” Xellos observed mildly.

Kingsnake shrugged. “We manage. When we have a war coming, the warriors are quarantined, before and afterward.”

Xellos looked out at the ragtag boys. “I have nothing further to teach, here, then.” And he strode off, leaving hurt confusion in his wake.

 

*******

The Bay Laurel boys were more cautious around him after that, writhing through the gaps in their divided loyalties, but they knew he would laugh at their most observant jokes or share in their parodies of the Lodge Speakers, or answer questions about sex, though his answers were likely to be regrettable. Should he have need of allies, Xellos thought he could probably call on at least one or two of them. Mica hovered around Five Toads house after Agate's “stroke,” usually in Cat Watching's vicinity if he could manage it, in Xellos' otherwise, and offered a hand here and there. If anyone addressed him directly he tended to flush and duck his head, but Xellos grew used to the boy's slightly wistful attention. It wasn't unlike Worry's, really. About the time people stopped gossiping about the Moon and started practicing the Two Quails Song and digging the Hish rackets and nets out of storage, Mica actually greeted Xellos directly, and issued an invitation: “You should see what we're doing with the staffs, now. Do you want to come tomorrow?” Mica's habitual floral shyness was undercut with acidic eagerness, and minty anxiety, and... 

Xellos looked back at him a little quizzically, then shrugged. “Shall I bring Swallow as well?” he offered. Because if the odd mix of emotions Mica exhibited was a Valley thing, he wanted a translator there.

“Sure!” Mica smiled a sweet, open smile. He did nothing so undignified as clapping his hands, but the minty fear turned to ginger at the back of Xellos' throat. “She's Serpentine,” Mica added nonsensically, “so that would be fine.”

In the end, pretty much all of Five Toads House, upstairs and downstairs both, came to watch the show. None of them had any difficulty understanding why the event would be Serpentine-only. “They mean to give this to the Summer,” Great-aunt Mohair explained. “That's our wakwa to put on, so we get to say yes or no. And besides, when the Summer actually rolls around, all of us are going to be too busy, either dancing ourselves or keeping everything flowing, to watch many shows.” 

This explanation also clarified just why the Bay Laurel boys chose a clearing on the back side of Fir Mountain for their display; it was to be a surprise for the rest of the town. This improvised stage was smoother and more level than Touwats Meadow – for a given value of smooth. Everyone wore their thickest shoes and carried rugs to combat the fallen bits of wild rose twigs that littered the ground. Xellos, looking at the roses and the little clearing, wondered if this flat place had once been the foundations of a house, hundreds or thousands of years ago. Swallow beside him breathed in the scent of the roses appreciatively. Stag and the other boys, also in their thickest shoes, wandered about stomping some thick clay tiles into the ground here and there – to what purpose Xellos could not fathom. Kingsnake was there today, so Stag's attempts at leadership were less aggressive than when the boys were there without their Speaker. At the opposite edge of the little clearing, under the trees, two more folded blankets sat next to two good-sized drums. Swallow's cousin Cat Watching settled herself down at one of these stations, frowning in concentration and whispering to herself, tapping two fingers against her brown-black gathered skirt. She wore her heyimas vest, Xellos noted, like Kingsnake and the Bay Laurel boys and unlike her sister Jayf- er- Morning Glory. Bounce and the two little boys who had showed up at yesterday's practice chased each other around the clearing's edge until Kingsnake and Adsevin separated them. Bounce, when he was tired, snuggled up next to Agate, who accepted his hug with a sad smile.

Agate still oscillated between frustrated anger and frightened depression, most days, struggling to reclaim her old authority without the words to back it up. Xellos thought she was fighting a lost cause, but that was quite all right, so far as he was concerned. One of the other doctors had made Agate a little booklet she could carry with her, nine words on each page, that she could use to communicate basic wants and ideas: Succotash, Stir Fry, wine, heyimas, drum, needle... Nearly all concrete things. Matters of emotion or emphasis or direction could be conveyed more quickly by expression or gesture. Agate could get by, but she couldn't take over. 

The parallels with his own situation gave him a certain sympathy for Agate. At least Swallow couldn't take his words away. 

Wait. _Yes, she could._ The horror took him over so quickly that Swallow turned her head and looked at him, confused, and patted his shoulder. Xellos shook his head at her and smiled shakily, and she backed off, but he couldn't shut his brain off. His meat-jelly brain that was every bit as vulnerable to Swallow's intervention as Agate's was. _Fractals!_ Except, no, she couldn't curse him as she had cursed Agate. _Because_ she had cursed Agate, and if her mother and her _haibi_ were both struck dumb within a year or two of each other, then that would utterly transform Swallow's relationship with the rest of the valley. Swallow would not do that. She clung to her idea of home as fiercely as the Princess Amelia clung to the notion of justice, and Swallow, for all her contrariness, was not nearly so impetuous as the the younger girl. Xellos got his breathing under control again.

The drums beat four and five. Xellos returned his attention to the little improvised stage and watched the boys as they began. They tapped the ends of their bamboo staffs against the tiles they had buried in the ground, the sound of it ringing out sharply. Then they whirled, together and away, the staffs meeting in complicated, rhythmic clacks, turning, meeting and parting in patterns. The boys had reinvented Taiko drumming, or Ghobar, or the Haka dance. Pond and Mica took turns vaulting over each other. The littlest boys thumped their staffs against the tiles and then clicked them together, then lifted them in the air to meet incoming swings from the other seven – who were all engaged in their own, more intricate patterns. Swallow, next to him, murmured, “if they do that on the stage platforms instead of the ground their feet will be drums, too!” Bounce, in front of him, squealed and drummed his heels in the dirt in excitement. Mohair and Swallow clapped in rhythm. Agate let out a raucous whistle. Xellos noted with approval that, in the event of an actual war, it would not be hugely difficult to train the boys to make use of their new skills beyond making human beauty. The little clearing warmed with the boys' elated pride, their audience's delight, and the intent, egoless concentration of the drummers. 

Xellos reached for his canteen automatically, to try and drown the fires. But the heat didn't seem centered in his mouth and eyes this time, but his chest and guts – all through him – and it wasn't exactly painful; more like the deep, soothing (and eventually deadly if one stayed too long, but that was what self-discipline was for) lassitude of a sweat lodge, or the Lakwanwe rocks in the summer, or Garlic's Nine Bean Chili on a day one had been working outdoors in the rainy season.

Well, that was interesting. Xellos ignored the boys and their busy pattern-making and turned his attention inward. There'd been a time or two with Swallow, too, where his usual tastes seemed reversed. Perhaps it had something to do with the bond? Was this joy easier to take because it was filtered through his – was she Thrall, or Master, at the moment? Those roles tended to fluctuate rapidly even in normal circumstances... But Swallow was actually the least happy person in the whole clearing; she was putting on a show of enjoyment while she brooded over (probably) her mother's condition and her own role in it. And when Xellos concentrated on her, he felt distinctly queasy. This... reversal did not seem to be her fault. 

How, then, had it come about? _You've had a human body for nearly two years now._ But what of that? He'd had a mazoku soul for two and a half millenia. But Garlic had told him, when Worry first became part of the household, “we like to think otherwise, but often the doing comes first, and the emotion afterward.” He'd been doing human things, in a human body that responded as it was designed to. Including the production of certain neurotransmitters intended to reward behavior that would further the survival of a lot of squishy, hairless apes with meat-jelly brains. The pleasing heat of joy, was it truly him feeling that, or only the body? _How much difference is there now, between the two? What am I become?_ According to Kesh metaphysics, a soul was made of choices. Xellos clenched his fingers, imagining himself clinging to the bond like a lifeline, holding onto Swallow's unease. He bit down on his own tongue, hard. Fiercely behind suddenly tear-filled eyes, he promised himself, _I am what I choose. I am too loyal to Lord Beastmaster to allow my body to have the final say._


	23. Gall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in this chapter for infidelity and for Xellos being a manipulative rat-bastard generally.

Reaffirming his dedication to the Great Cause over the insidious pull of the gradual and ordinary did not, alas, make it any clearer what Xellos ought to actually do. Strategy of that sort had always been the prerogative of Lord Beastmaster, and showing the wrong sort of initiative could be a very dangerous game. There had been primary and secondary assignments, and standing orders for recurring situations, and almost none of them did any good out here. There were no Claire Bible manuscripts to hunt down and destroy, or at least he'd better hope there weren't, because if the recovering City of Mind got its scanners anywhere near one... well. It didn't bear thinking of. There were humans here that could, perhaps, be manipulated into starting a temple to Zelas, or to the Dark Lord. The Na Valley was not immune to cults. The very specific systems of ritual and worship that best served Her, though... idioms about games and the price of candles came to mind. 

The Omorn Peninsula doubtless held at least a few secrets that could destroy large parts of the world – a City-run nuclear plant, perhaps (though the City favored thorium for its radiation, with a shorter half-life and without the explosive possibilities of plutonium.) There remained the Great Caldera in the Range of Heaven. But the calderas would destroy, not the world, but only the biosphere; a Pyrrhic victory that would leave both sides of the war crippled for a thousand millenia, only for the game to start again. Lord Beastmaster had been young and impressionable at the time of the Sacrifice of the Dinosaurs; She made sure Her servants understood the lesson. Always assuming he was able to access the appropriate tools to start such a conflagration, doing so without specific orders to that effect was not the way to redeem his mistake with the City of Mind. What to do instead, then?

The entire tangle left him feeling restless and twitchy: an oppressive boredom that so resembled the condition Swallow called “Finders' Feet” that Xellos sometimes wondered if he'd caught it from her. She and he echoed each other, certainly, in the ferocious eagerness with which they undertook preparations for the small changes that were within their power: leaving Tachas Touchas, meeting the Train at Madidinou and reintroducing Fefinum to distance hauling. Bidding Fefinum and the train farewell at Chulkumas. (Swallow seemed to undertake Missing Fefinum as an actual task, like milking the goat.) Remaking the routines of Red Beams House, only to put them in abeyance again for the move up into the hills as the Dry Season heat took up residence in earnest. There were always so many little things to be done, so many tiny necessities to make sure the body kept working the way it was supposed to. Preparing food; attending to the places and creatures that produced the food. Being clean. Sleeping. Exercising. Even if one rejected the seduction of the comfortable; even if one tried to focus on the need for something greater with every siphon one set into the irrigation ditches and every stroke of the whetstone against the cooking knife, that was half a day gone. 

And then there was the need for social contact. Humans needed packs around them – physically needed them, the programming cell-deep. Depriving a human body of other human bodies led to profound breakdowns in function, and maintaining that contact had its own set of requirements, made the more exacting by Valley systems. (Not that the Kesh were unique in this regard, of course. The rituals of the Court of Seyruun were just as effective a means of sucking down spare time to fuel social adhesion as anything the Five Houses invented.) All these tiny moments for tiny needs. Two years of moments had sifted by soft as cornstarch while Xellos found his feet and undertook what he supposed one might call an extended reconnaissance. He had reached conclusions about the lay of the land, now; he knew what tools he had at his disposal. The moments spun past, the little necessities, stinging like blown sand. Swallow had taken some of her power now. Sometimes she used it in ways he approved of, as with her mother's “stroke.” More often she did not. Worry fawned on him. Garlic wheezed and nodded. Reedbed suggested that he dance the Water, this year, officially accepting and being accepted into the house of Blue Clay. That might make strategic sense, but it would require him to choose a Kesh name for himself out of the myriad nicknames people gave him, and he didn't want to. It was all so tiny, and what was he to do?

Swallow endured his fretting with the same patient detachment as he employed when she dithered over trying to balance Swallow the Finder and Toudou the Doctor, who might go back to the Finders after all... They spent whole evenings echoing the same emotional tone back and forth – _I wish to support you but I can't quite bring myself to care about the thing that is worrying you for its own sake._ It tasted mushy, like beans.

He shuffled the heterogeneous pieces of the Map, equally dissatisfied with both the finished pieces and the notes. The task of translating the latter into the former was a tedious one that ill-suited his current mood, but he kept at it doggedly. He had a niggling sense that something about the Map was wrong, incomplete, and he needed to see the whole of what he had before he could identify what was missing. If he got it right, the Map could be an object of power in its own right; as dangerous and treacherous as a fragment of the Claire Bible, but for the other side. If he could persuade Swallow to study it, to learn to read it, it would pull her mind deeper into, as she would put it, Coyote territory. If he could somehow get the finished Map into the right hands in the Barrier Lands, well. It wouldn't redeem his great error, but it would be something. If it got into the wrong hands though... maybe once he didn't need it any longer, he'd soak the whole thing in Ganais wine and drop it down the Absence next Sunreturn. But he needed to get it right, first.

Swallow and Worry found him at it one day shortly before the Water. (He would dance, he'd told Reedbed, if he could wait on a name. She said she and the other Speakers would talk it over.) The Map was spread out over an old sheet, taking up half the floor of the three-walled summerhouse. Worry flopped under his favorite tree with a creaking mutter. Swallow tiptoed around the edge of the sheet, looking from the Map to Xellos' frown of concentration and back. Xellos tasted beans.

“You should talk to Gall about that,” Swallow said. Xellos looked up at her properly and became aware of the crick in his neck, the pink welt of a mosquito bite decorating one of Swallow's naked breasts, the clammy line of drying sweat down the back of his shirt. (Most people went around half naked in the heat between the Summer and the Wine. Xellos, who could get sunburned on a cloudy day, did not.) “She knows more about art-pain than I do,” Swallow went on, “and besides, she's trying to make some of her dragonfly stories come back near enough for her to remake them into written offerings; maybe even a book. You can ask her about How Coyote Lost Her Earrings and she can ask you about Wolfpack Island.”

However, it was not the pursuit of art that led Xellos to actually seek more of Gall's company, but service to Lord Beastmaster. Because perhaps Swallow's role in his life was less like that of the Inverse than he had supposed. He'd been so stuck on Turning Swallow, but perhaps he did not need to manipulate her so directly. Perhaps he should instead treat her like his last fiancee: Martina's dedication to revenge had been enjoyable, but of minor strategic importance. Her value in the matter of Lord Phibrizzio had come from the access she had granted him and the ways she distracted the Inverse and her friends from considering what Xellos might be up to. Perhaps Swallow was the handle, and someone else – Gall? – was the blade. 

Gall, now that Xellos considered the matter, had a few things going for her as a potential worshiper of Zelas that Swallow did not. She was more thoughtful than Swallow, had a greater interest in the schemata of the universe and the big questions. Swallow's down-to-earth nature could sometimes be manipulated so that she took significant actions on the Astral plane without even quite noticing. (She'd noticed with Agate, yes, but for every step like that, there were a dozen times she helped with an abortion, or gave someone a book of poems from Deep Rock country, or talked an adolescent into moving house for a while...) Gall saw significances. But because she thought about them, she could be argued into and out of convictions where Swallow had only instincts. 

And one more thing. Xellos, particularly, had a hold on Gall because she wanted him. The sweet-sour tang of un-acted-on lust accompanied Gall as surely as the radishy burn of joy accompanied Worry. She behaved, around Xellos, with great correctness and deliberation, never letting herself get pulled into conversation with him away from the rest of the group, guarding her expression when she spoke to him. He could feel the little push-pull of Gall's urges any time they happened to be at the same gathering. _Here-we-are-again-oh-well._ Xellos could do something with that. 

He began, as Swallow had suggested, with art and philosophy – in full view of everyone else, at first, with nothing in his body language but relaxation and intellectual curiosity. (Gall learned several hymns to Zelas, in translation; she was able to guess accurately which ones had been written by people in power and which by the underclasses, but if she noticed that the one called “Rabbit's Life is Made of Fear” did not contain much sympathy for the Rabbit, she didn't mention it to Xellos.) Then, between the Water and the Wine, he made sure to help Gall's mother's household move back down into No More Ants House, and occasionally stopped by to say hello without Swallow being there. A faint, floral note of wariness began to augment Gall's usual mix, growing stronger every time Xellos allowed their eyes to meet, every time he laughed a little louder than usual at one of Gall's deadpan jokes.

He was being subtle, still. Nothing that Gall would interpret as deliberate flirting, or if she did, she did so only to dismiss it as a product of her own melancholy imagination. At the Wine, he told her earnestly that he quite liked freckles, and then whooped and lurched off to join a whip-dance, acting only a little more drunk than he actually was, after which he went back to his usual pattern of declaiming his own excellence in what would have been excellent rhyme, had he only been able to stick to a single language for the entirety of the speech. (By the Void, he had a usual pattern for the Wine now... how was this happening so fast?) He had a blurry impression of Swallow clutching a little too tightly at Worry and the two of them hitting him with identical sad-eyed stares, but he couldn't remember the rest of the context later except for the drunkenness. 

When sober, Swallow's unease manifested in a tendency to sit next to him with her notebooks whenever Xellos got the Map out, and an increase in invitations to come with her when she went out gathering. “I'm glad you and Gall are getting along,” she told him one morning as they grubbed among fallen leaves, filling Fefinum's panniers with Longcup acorns. “She's been a good friend to me for a long time, and I think you need someone like her, the same way I do. I wish I didn't have to be afraid you were going to start picking at her the way you do with me.”

Xellos shrugged. “It may be that Gall needs people like us to pick and poke at her. She has a very good mind, but she's a bit lazy and timid. She'll hang back and observe forever without doing anything; if anyone ever manages to get 'just a little pregnant,' as they say, it will be Gall.”

Swallow laughed. “You would know, spy-binyez. Just... be sure what you intend, around her, all right? Don't sidle into something that could hurt everyone because you were having so much fun playing with possibilities.”

That, Xellos thought, was Doctor Toudou talking. Swallow two years ago would have seen it, but not been able to find the words. But Swallow did not govern his relationships with the rest of the Valley. He smirked. “And if I intend to hurt?” 

Swallow sat back on her heels, her mouth tight. “You can't keep doing that,” she said.

Xellos kept his head still, only his eyes moving sideways to meet Swallow’s as he gave her a slow blink. His hands continued their search for acorns. “I think you'll find that I am quite capable.”

“You can't,” Swallow insisted. She made a jerky movement, as if she meant to spring up and pace, or maybe just reach over and shake him. “I don't believe you're so crippled you can't do something besides rebel against whatever you can find. You're... you're not that small. If pain comes from something important, that's different, but to hurt for the sake of hurting, what good does that do anyone?”

He turned his head a little to look at her, letting his mouth spread into a grin. “Why, Swallow, I do believe you're jealous! Am I correct that you would no longer be content to live in separate households, the way you suggested when we first came to the Valley?”

An acorn spun into his forehead, flung at a stinging speed. Xellos sat back on his heels, blinking, and saw that Swallow had levitated a small cloud of them a few feet away, ready swarm like bees. She really had been doing more with her magic lately; Xellos couldn't help feeling proud of her.

“Don't dodge the issue.” Swallow had her arms crossed over her chest and was wearing her best glare. “I asked you about intent. Are you open, or closed? Are you taking risks with Gall because she's giving you something you need, or because you can make her uncertain and make me angry and pretend what you feel belongs to someone else and you're just picking it up?” She clenched her eyes shut, took a heaving breath, and opened them again. Her crossed arms opened and fell to her side. The floating acorns pattered back down among the leaves; she'd chosen the ones that were too small to harvest. “I do love you,” she said, using _unne:_ family feeling. “And maybe it's only a matter of habit and practice, but I think it's real liking. But I get tired, sometimes, of playing mother to a Bay Laurel boy. I don't think I realized, back in volcano country – and I know I didn't before you left the Four Houses – I didn't understand how unfinished your souls were: that you were still looking for edges to push against and rules to break and gods to obey. If I had known, I wouldn't have come inland with you, pretty though you are, because you can't really invite someone into your house before you've built it; things get too messed up, otherwise.”

Xellos cupped the back of his head with one hand and knotted his eyebrows. “Does all that still mean you're warning me off Gall?”

Swallow made a growling noise that made Worry look up from the old rabbit hole he'd been nosing at. “I am saying,” she said through her teeth, holding Xellos' gaze, “remember that Gall is real, a human among humans, not an ap-ap counter. And so am I. And so are you.”

Xellos let his eyes drop. “I hear you,” he said. They both knew, and each knew the other knew, that he was not promising anything.

 

****

 

The moments flew by, stinging like sand. Xellos still hadn't been initiated into the Blue Clay, or any other House; he still answered to any nickname anyone cared to bestow, but he made a game of seeing how far he could get into the ceremonial life of the Valley without anyone complaining about that little detail. He'd gotten drunk at the Wine, and next would be the Grass, and then the Sun. He'd run the corn maze at the Grass, he decided. He might attend a long-singing at the Sun, or maybe not.

He asked Gall to tell him How Coyote Lost Her Earrings, and told her why he used a honeycomb pattern filled with alternating dots, wavy lines, and asterisks to denote the Legion of Claws on the Map. He asked her if she would teach him the Grass songs – not the Red Adobe ones, but the ones everyone sang. When Shining and Fairweather hosted a gourd-carving party (Puma's lanterns, they called the resulting sculptures: grotesque faces leered from every porch railing,) Xellos stationed himself between Swallow and Gall. He was careful, still. Kemel and Hazelnut (and sometimes Keepword and Buckbrush) came over for dinner far more often than anyone from No More Ants House. Nonetheless, and still. Gall... attended. 

“Does Swallow complain about me to you?” Xellos asked her one foggy evening, a few days before he and Swallow left town to visit Tachas Touchas again. (A short visit, this time; the Twenty-One Days were half over and they would come back after Sunreturn.) “Or does Hazelnut get most of that?”

Gall pulled her shawl tighter around herself and threw the shuttle back across the warp threads again. “That's an odd thing to ask,” she said.

Xellos shrugged. “People grumble, you know.” Poor, silly things that they were – Xellos had been grateful many times that Mazoku did not feel the need to turn their irritations into words, but the human tendency to do so had certainly made his job as a spy easier. “But if Swallow takes you into her confidence, I'll whine to Hempseed or someone instead, when I need to whine. It wouldn't be fair to make you a go-between.”

Gall twitched her shoulders again. Clackety-clackety-thump, went the loom. Xellos twisted the gauge on his largest wrench until its claws sat firmly on the sleeve nut that joined the leaky sink pipe to the main for the house.

“You love her,” Gall said flatly. _Iyakwun:_ the love that transcended, the bond that could not be broken. The word that _giyakwunshe_ came from.

“She and I are indeed bound,” Xellos agreed. He leaned into the wrench and grunted a little louder than he needed to. Swallow, he knew, appreciated his shoulders. If Gall felt the same, she would have a chance to ogle him now.

“I know what she is feeling, always. As she does for me,” he said. “Anything that happens to either of us touches us both. Sometimes – often, even – my thoughts speak to me with her voice. I will return to her, all the rest of my life.” Xellos grunted again and the nut loosened enough that he could work the problem pipe out of its housing. He shone a small electric torch down the socket, wishing irritatedly that he could still work a basic light spell and thus have two hands available for making repairs. Then he turned and met Gall's eyes. She had turned halfway around in her seat to face him. “None of that means that we make each other happy.” He shrugged a little, flickered a wistful half-smile. “You love your mother, after all, and your work. You know firsthand that _iyakwun_ is not easy.”

Gall bit her lip and turned abruptly back to her loom. “Talk to Hempseed,” she said.

“All right.” Xellos went on with his plumbing. The loom clacked.

 

*****

He and Swallow went down to Tachas Touchas. The firs stood straight and black as ever behind the tight circle of houses. Baby Plenty staggered about chanting “Boodle boodle,” and “hid” by kneeling on the ground and hiding her eyes behind her fists when she saw one of the White Clowns. Bounce presented his gift seedlings on Sunreturn morning; manzanita for Pond, rose for Adsevin, pear for Swallow, hawthorn for Xellos. They had to walk nearly a quarter of a mile out to see the madrone he tended for Agate. “Do you like it, Agate? Grandmother-binyez? Are you surprised?”

“My name now is Still Learning,” Agate said, suddenly and clearly, and then her hands flew to her mouth, and Adsevin whooped, and everyone fell to hugging everyone else. The feast of Sunreturn came to Five Toads House with none of its usual solemnity. Four days after that, Swallow and Agate took a long walk together, talking, and came back wearing oddly identical smiles. Xellos stroked his chin thoughtfully. Five days after that, Swallow and Xellos and Fefinum started back north to Chulkumas.

 

******

The moments flew by, stinging like sand. Hazelnut had her baby; a long, thin, knobbly boy who resisted any attempts to swaddle him and refused to be carried in any fashion that restricted his ability to stare out at the world going by. Hazelnut and Kemel called him Catkin. Shining's Pumpkin, nearly into her “Clearwater years” and learning to read, read to Catkin and tried to give him all her toys in turn, then took them back when Catkin didn't look at them. Waterstrider found herself another man, a smith from Kastoha called Bell, and the two of them danced the Wedding that year. Swallow sang the carol and wondered quietly to Hazelnut whether this time, the marriage would last past the Moon. Keepword and Buckbrush danced too, in celebration of a marriage that now had a grandchild. 

Gall sighed a little wistfully, looking at the dancing couples, and then at the crowd that wasn't dancing: Shining and Fairweather and Pumpkin, Hazelnut and Kemel and Catkin, Hempseed and Blue Horse the hunter, who might or might not be sleeping together (even Swallow wasn't certain), Swallow and Xellos. Swallow sought Gall out as the wakwa broke up and the newly-married couples and their families headed back to the houses for wedding dinners. “Maybe you should go up to Wakwaha for a season,” she suggested. “It's a place where thinkers and visionaries gather; you might like to get away from all our busyness for a while.”

Gall looked at her, looked a longer moment at Xellos, who pretended not to notice. “Maybe,” she said quietly. Xellos felt the familiar sweet-sour fade off his tongue as they parted ways; to the sheep barn for Gall, to Red Beams for Xellos and Swallow. Garlic hallooed them from a crowd surrounding a very young man in wedding finery; a great-nephew, Xellos thought, but he couldn't remember the lad's name or House at the moment. “I'll sleep in the heyimas tonight!” Swallow waved an acknowledgment and turned to look at her giyakwunshe. Xellos wondered if she was going to suggest that they dance next year after all, but all she said was, “Thank you for singing with us. I know the blessing song doesn't mean much to you, but the dancers felt the blessing anyway.”

“Mm.” Xellos moved a little away from her. “Let's use up the garlic beans tonight; I'll make some fresh flatbread to go with.”

“I'll see if we have any eggs.” Swallow headed toward the chicken coop and then ordered Worry away: “No, silly dog, you know you aren't welcome there. Go with Coyote's Son, or go back to Dogtown.”

 

****

The project of seducing Gall (to his person, first, later, he hoped, to the service of Lord Beastmaster) gave Xellos pleasure on a couple of levels that he hadn't quite expected when he began. He'd undertaken the task to prove to himself that he still had the skill to carry it off. And to give something toward the Great Cause, even if it was only one soul. But he found Gall restful in ways that Swallow was not. Gall expected nothing of him; did not load him with chores, did not reproach him if he vanished into his own affairs for a few days without a word. Xellos knew that this was a matter of social structure as much as anything; Swallow was the head of the household Xellos lived in (though Garlic had veto power on some things) and Gall was merely a friend. If, for some reason, he went over to No More Ants House instead of Red Beams, Gall or her mother would have just as much for him to do. Still, Gall's wistful acceptance of whatever Xellos offered felt even more pleasant in comparison to the ongoing... interaction with Swallow.

He stopped by The Good Sitting Place one sunny morning shortly after the World, on the way back from a reservoir check. “So you are here, Gall! Did everyone at No More Ants House come through the lambing all right?”

Gall twisted a little and looked up at him. “So you are here, Swallow's Man. Yes, Clamber finally had hers five days ago; she was the last of them. Fern says she'd going to give Toudou a half rack and a hind leg when she starts butchering, for helping her with Heavyfoot's lung trouble, and don't let her forget.”

“Your mother is a generous woman, Gall.” Xellos settled down next to her on the bank, only a little closer than strictly warranted.

Gall shrugged. “Give when you can, take when you must,” she quoted. “And having Heavyfoot around for one or two more years will make things a lot easier; we've already bargained with Turning's family to take their bull calf when he's weaned and gelded, so Heavyfoot can retire after that.”

Xellos nodded judiciously. “I don't really know cows,” he said, “would that be after the Moon, then? That the bull calf will come to No More Ants?” Gall made an affirmative grunt. Xellos went on, having worked his way around to the topic he intended to talk about. “And speaking of the Moon, do you think people would be upset if I danced it this year? Or is my status still too... in-between for that?”

Gall looked up at him, startled, then flushed to see his face closer to hers than she expected, and then scooted a little further away from him, hitching her bottom over a protruding cottonwood root to do so. Xellos carefully did not smile, and gave her a few moments to collect herself.

“Hard to say,” Gall concluded at last. “The... the outer people, like Pollen and Clayface and Trout – anyone we don't really talk with, much, you know, I think everyone sort of thinks you're Blue Clay already except the Blue Clay people, who know you're not. It wouldn't bother them too much to see you at the Moon, I don't think. But for Reedbed and the other people who know you haven't come all the way in to the Second House, I think it might bother them a lot. Because why are you claiming a place in the _wakwade_ if you won't promise the rest of it?”

More or less Xellos' own assessment of the matter, then. “Mm,” he said, looking out at the water. “It's to do with having been a slave for so long, I think. Promises and their consequences feel more.... consequential, perhaps. And the matter of taking a new name... ”

“And you haven't chosen to leave Wolfpack Island behind you,” Gall concluded, “which is the hinge of the matter, really.”

“And that,” Xellos agreed. “I am not entirely convinced I should have to, to the degree that... some people want.” He glanced sideways at her. “Will you be dancing?”

Gall slumped a little. “Yes, probably,” she sighed. “I mostly do, and then I mostly regret it afterward. It can be hard on the women, that dance, you know: those of us who aren't very pretty or don't know how to flirt... the ones who don't get chosen right off and end up with a man who's just looking for any old cunt for the night and doesn't care... It always seems like it ought to be … more than it is, for me. It's hard to find the sacredness.”

Xellos tilted his head. “I would not have thought you would have so much trouble there,” he said. “Especially on the First Night, when it's mostly people who know you. You're only pretty in fits and starts, and you don't play games, but your face is very... alive. It shows everything that is happening inside you. I'm sure you would reward... attention.”

Gall's cheeks shone with the heat of her blush. “No one has ever said that about me before. Most people think I'm reserved.”

Xellos grinned. “So mostly your face shows that you are thinking,” he said cheerfully, “which, mostly, you are. But I, at least, would be happy to see your face when you are not thinking at all. Under the Moon or in the sunlight, whenever, if ever, you might be willing.” He leaned over to drop a kiss on Gall's forehead, just at the hairline, felt her startle under him, and backed away again at once. But not far, and he kept his posture dominant, looming just a bit.

“Stop.” Gall scrambled upright and started to walk away, quickly.

Xellos did not follow her, but he pitched his voice to be heard. “Not close enough to the wakwa to be talking about that, then?” he asked, “I'm sorry to have upset you. I'll go.” 

 

****

 

Gall didn't wait for the Moon. In fact, she started making a few changes to her routines almost immediately. She did so quietly, without much fuss, but her loom went back indoors instead of on the balcony of her house, so it was no longer obvious whether she was or wasn't working. She spent less time at the Good Sitting Place and more time on long walks, pacing and thinking, she said. She avoided the town and also the most popular trysting-places on those walks, but Xellos found he could track her down without much difficulty, and always in privacy. Gall had chosen to be hunted. Had someone with more of a reputation, say, Swallow, or Waterstrider, changed her behavior as Gall had done, there would have been talk. With Gall, though, quiet, tractable Gall, still a regular fixture at the heyimas and the Madrone Lodge and disinclined to talk about herself at the best of times, such changes were all but invisible. People in small towns watched everything, but that didn't mean they _saw_ everything. Xellos himself was, of course, more visible, but he was also more practiced in sneaking. They managed.

This game was so different, with Gall: as different as shuttlecock and polo. Which should not be a surprise, but somehow was. Sex was a matter of bodies, after all, and bodies formed habits, and Xellos' body had been in the habit of Swallow for well over two years now. That shouldn't balance out centuries of other experiences, but somehow it did, so far as the body was concerned. Gall was softer, not only in the obvious ways of a person who mostly sat at her loom instead of trekking about, but in ways Xellos hadn't anticipated. Gall's hands were smooth with lanolin. Her feet, digging into his back when she wrapped her legs around him, lacked the calloused ridges that Swallow's barefoot miles had gifted her with. Gall's movements were softer, and the sounds she made likewise, and her mouth under his was smaller, and her hair in his fingers both smoother and stiffer. And all these were minor lacunae compared to the fact that Gall behaved not as a packmate, but as prey. 

She hadn't looked him in the eye, the first time he came to her. Hadn't reached out to him. When he had reached for her, she leaned into his touch, when his mouth met hers, hers opened but did not press. Every gesture told Xellos that he was in charge here; she would not challenge him, would not suggest particular positions or activities, would give no direct advice or help; it was all up to him. He found himself putting on the Demon Lover mask again, for the first time in a long time, felt himself growing fiercer, with an undercurrent of anger in his desire. Why was she making this so much work? Except of course, he knew; she was afraid of him, expecting to be hurt, consenting to it. Gall was giving him the use of her will in this. 

“I will not be good for you,” he warned her, running one white finger along her jawline, then across her closed eyes. “I will give and take pleasure, but I will not make you happy. Rather the reverse, I expect.” 

Gall looked straight up into his face, both hands flat on his chest, ready to push him away or clutch at him. “Had I wanted someone good for me,” she agreed, “I would have been better off choosing almost anyone else in the Southeast arm of the town, including that evil-minded old greentail hen that Betebbes still hasn't killed. But you, I think, are a doorway. And I am ready to have the next thing happen, ready to go on.”

He laid her back in the meadow she'd found, out on the hunting side, nearly at the end of Xellos' psychic leash. He pushed her skirts up, moved up between her legs. Gall looked into his eyes, half hypnotized, shaking, but still eager. Thoughtfully, Xellos took hold of one of her wrists, moved her hand up above her head, and pinned it there. Gall arched into him. Xellos let himself fall entirely into his body, the tingling nerves, Gall's breathy moans, the faint grit of the mud under the new grass. His last coherent thought was that Swallow had to know exactly what he was doing. He thrust himself further in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll note we have an actual chapter count now and are nearing the end. (grumbles about pacing troubles, but seriously....) I've got two more fics set in this 'verse and featuring the rest of the Slayers gang that will... happen... sometime...within the year, I hope - both quite a bit shorter than this one. My thanks to loyal readers for sticking with me thus far and i am happy to hear from either or both of you at any time.


	24. Shackles and Bones

Swallow's continued silence on the matter of Xellos’ infidelity worried Gall, (who would have felt guilty even with Swallow's express permission), and puzzled Xellos. From his own observations and what the rest of Chulkumas had told him of Swallow's previous lovers, her normal mode was to get more vocal, not less, when things got difficult. Her liaison with Clayface the actor had ended with a screaming fight outside the wash-house; Swallow had pulled his clothes one piece at a time from her laundry basket and dropped them in a mud puddle . The year before she left Careful to go journeying to Klatsaand, she had talked the ears off Hazelnut, Shining, Gall, and Keepword, chewing over the issues between herself and Careful as if she were determined to convert them from rawhide to suede with nothing but the power of her own jaw . But she did not talk to, or of, Xellos and Gall after her first warning. 

Perhaps she confided less in Gall than she had once upon a time, visited No More Ants House less often. She still invited Gall to Five Toads, usually as part of a larger party, and seemed to have no trouble talking to her of lighter matters. Her sexual encounters with Xellos became only slightly less frequent and noticeably more ardent than they had been in the last month or two; Xellos sniffed about for emotional undercurrents and found sadness, but no desperation. He couldn't even be certain that the change wasn't in himself, or caused by the weather (Swallow had seasons.) Swallow did not grow more flirtatious with the population of Chulkumas at large (Hazelnut said she had, when she'd broken up with Hempseed), nor did she dip below her usual baseline level of flirt that had been her default mode as a Finder, or possibly had led her to the Finders' Lodge in the first place. Had Xellos not been able to sense the effort Swallow was putting into the performance, he might have thought her complacent, assured of her hold on him and unconcerned about monogamy. But the effort was, in fact, there, and he didn't know what to make of it. Was she avoiding scandal out of pride? Out of concern for her fledgling career as Doctor Toudou? Out of simple exhaustion, incapable of emotional display in the aftermath of the lambing?

Since it was his nature to poke at sore spots, Xellos poked. On a day they had dedicated to housecleaning, Xellos watched Swallow prepare a load for the wash-house and asked her, “Should I be guarding my shirts from mud puddles?”

Swallow jammed a pair of socks into the carrysack with unnecessary violence. “I was sixteen,” she said flatly. “That is, if you mean that thing with Clayface.”

Xellos glanced quickly out the door to make certain Garlic had not yet come back from the heyimas. The old man had spent the morning identifying those of his little jars and bottles whose contents had lost their virtue or simply contained less than a dose of whatever they had held, then washing them out, and now he was taking them all down to the Fifth Angle of the heyimas to be reused. 

“You would be justified, you know. I'm quite sure almost everyone in the valley would say so, if asked. Or at least advise you to put my shoes on the landing. Instead, you let Gall think you don't know what's going on. Why?”

Swallow let her sack full of laundry flop over sideways onto the floor again. “Maybe I should do that.” She plopped herself down on top of the laundry and spoke to her own knees, eyes resting on the heels of her hands. “What I am doing instead is making stories that may or may not be true, and getting all mixed up again. Am I your haibi today, or your mother again? Are you growing away from me and toward Gall? In that case, it's you who should leave, not I who should send you away. Are you straining the bond to prove to yourself that you are still free, or that even if you do your worst I will still be there? Should I fight to bring you back so that you know I think you're worth fighting for? Are you testing the strength of your shackles, or of your bones?” She straightened and raked her fingers through her hair, looking up at Xellos through damp eyes. “This is your choice to make, not mine. If you make that choice in good faith. Decide what you want. Go with Gall, or stay with me, or get a couple of bottles of Betebbes' best and you and she and I can maybe work something else out. I can keep going forward, whatever we do, but you need to choose.”

Swallow stalked off with the laundry, leaving Xellos blinking a bit in her wake. Not one of the motivations she had ascribed to him were thoughts that had occurred to him at all. It took him a few seconds (stupid meat-jelly brains) to identify the error they all held in common: Swallow, he realized with a spark of warmth he did not wish to analyze, assumed that the bond between them and the relationship that had accreted around it was the central one of his life. _As it is for her..._ he’d been trying to seduce her, to push, to cajole, and she had pushed back every time, but in the background all this had just… happened, without his quite noticing. Swallow had fought to maintain her fragile, shallow web of casual friendships and business contacts, the hundreds of fine filaments that held her into her place in the valley, but she had risked her bond with her _mother_ over Xellos, even at the beginning. She would choose the valley over him; but, one person at a time, she would choose him over almost anyone in the valley.

The realization left him feeling deeply satisfied and oddly tender at the same time; it “hit the spot,” as the Kesh liked to say of a meal that matched one’s immediate nutritional needs with greater than usual accuracy . For a moment, the truly central loyalty in his life, his obedience to Lord Beastmaster, seemed cold and hollow. _Wait, no. Cold and hollow is the goal. The body lies, Lieutenant. Warmth is fleeting and nothingness is eternal._ But perhaps his original goal was not so far out of reach as he’d been imagining; perhaps he’d merely let his fear of impending death, a mere fifty or sixty years away, goad him into impatience. Perhaps…. Xellos finished wiping down the pantry shelves and went to see if he could find Gall.

*****

Gall was in the Madrone Lodge library, doing her own cleaning, it appeared – taking books off a shelf, rubbing them with a piece of soft leather, putting them back. She saw him and frowned slightly; Gall got nervous whenever they were seen together in public, no matter how appropriate their behavior might be. “So you are here, Swallow’s man,” she said. The head librarian, Wellspring, looked up from the card file she was reviewing, and two or three other scholars twitched a bit and hunched further over their books and scrolls. “Can I help you find something?”

Xellos inclined his head. “I have been thinking about boundaries and sacredness,” he said quietly. “I have been thinking about Stone Telling, talking of trying to sing the Water Songs while living underground in the Condor’s City, and about Gold and Falcon and Grey Bull, and their account of trying to make a three-person Wine wakwa in Stoy without getting into trouble.”

Gall’s eyes flickered sideways to Wellspsring and the card file. “I think both of those books may still be staying at Red Beams House already,” she said. “Are you looking for others like them?”

“Maybe…”

Her expression grew shrewd. “Or maybe you are looking for something else. Maybe you would like to hear from other no-house people who brought their own _wakwade_ into the valley, and what happened then.” 

Xellos grinned. “I do like your quick mind, Gall.”

“You’ve been trying to teach me heyiya songs from Wolfpack Island; it wasn’t that much of a stretch.”

“ _About_ Wolfpack Island, not _from,_ ” Xellos corrected. “Those of us close enough to Lord Beastmaster to reside on the island serve- served Her in more substantial ways.” The hymns were paltry things, really; in themselves, the power they gave Her was less than that of a single panic attack. Their use came in their ability to move humans _en masse;_ to change minds that hovered on the edge of taking action and overcome scruples. Given time, words, and orgasms, Gall might be persuaded into sacrificing an actual rabbit while she sang “Rabbit’s Life is Made of Fear,” and painting her face with the blood. Given time, effort, orgasms, and hallucinogens, they could rope in Betebbes and Waterstrider and some of the adolescents. The sacrifices could move up to sheep, or better yet stillborn or aborted fetuses, and eventually, to willing, and then unwilling, humans, and then Lord Beastmaster would have a new sacred grove. Always assuming the rest of the valley didn’t stop them before then, but there were ways to make a small town decide to ignore certain kinds of secrets; it was possible…

“We don’t have anything of that sort.” While Xellos had been plotting, Well had gotten up and joined the conversation. “As you might guess, most Kesh people aren’t very comfortable listening to no-house people telling them they aren’t sacred enough. So even the no-house people who make written offerings don’t say much about that, and if they did, people wouldn’t read it, and the librarians wouldn’t keep the writing around for long…”

Xellos nodded understanding. One of the scholars, a dumpy, gray-headed man with thick round spectacles, cleared his throat a little and waved a hand at the cushion next to him. “Looks like Corntassel might have some ideas, though,” Well said, and turned back toward her card file. Xellos, always happy to come into contact with more information, settled in next to Corntassel.

“Have you read any of the other accounts from the time of the Condor People, besides Stone Telling’s?” Corntassel asked. 

“A few…”

“About the Warrior and Lamb Lodges?”

“They were cults, were they not? Kesh people engaging in Dayao spiritual practices? And the cults were purged when the Condor lost power in the Na valley?”

“Funny way of putting it,” Corntassel grumbled. “The Condor men never cared what the Lodges were doing, and they were never able to make us do much we didn’t want to anyway. But yes, the two lodges stopped being after a big talk at Cottonwood Flats that happened around the time the Condor’s city started dying”

Xellos hummed noncommittally. “It does sound like that would be worth looking into; did any of the Warriors or Lambs write anything, or was it all on the other side?”

Corntassel grinned and shook his head, not in denial. “Oh, they wrote, alright. Great vomitous word purges, they wrote, all their sorrow and shame. I don’t know how much of it was kept; if it was kept at all it would be in the heyimas, not the Madrone. But you should ask.”

“Thank you,” Xellos said, thoughtfully, “I think I will.”

 

*****

A few days of discreet inquiry found Xellos and a book settled in the corner of the front porch of Red Beams House that had become his territory, as the table in the main room was Garlic’s, except at mealtimes. (Swallow seemed to have either less or more need of a personal space, having a favorite table at the Madrone Lodge and five or six particular outdoor places she liked to meet particular friends, but when she needed to brood she went to Fefinum’s stall in the horse barn.) Xellos had made a project, his first summer in Chulkumas, of seeing how much time he could spend in that corner, in full view of whomever wandered by, before people accused him of being lazy. The final figure turned out to be, “more time than it takes for the muscles to start getting twitchy,” so he’d dropped it in favor of doing actual work and insinuating himself into a few more social groups, but when he did settle down, the porch held everything he needed to be comfortable: The little chest that held the pieces of the Map stayed there when Xellos wasn’t working on it (it was so very close to being done, as soon as Xellos figured out what felt off about it and got that fixed) served as a foot or elbow-rest. A few ratty cushions gave Worry a place to curl up or bury his toys. Xellos’ old black cloak, shabby as it was, was warm enough to ward off the chill on any day when it wasn’t actually raining sideways. Swallow’s friends and Xellos’ workmates knew to find him there, especially around midday, when, in the dry season, the weather grew too warm to work.

This particular morning was still on the cool side, and the town was very quiet. The wind carried a few voices singing Planting Lodge songs from somewhere. Swallow had taken Fefinum and Worry out on a gathering expedition; there had been some talk of meeting up with Shining or Fairweather and letting Pumpkin begin to learn how to ride. Xellos was grateful for the quiet, because the book he had liberated from the Blue Clay library required concentration. It was an oral history, a collection of accounts from “The trouble with the Condor People,” some of which had been given specifically to the editor, Mines, and some of which were, apparently, reprints of other written work that had not survived to the present time. Much of it had to do with the diplomatic and trade negotiations between the Kesh and the Condor troops and the other people around the Omorn peninsula who had had interactions with the Dayao, but it included, as well, some stories about the Warrior and the Lamb lodges. 

The tricky part of these was the perspective. “The big talk at Cottonwood Flats” had been quite mild-mannered as inquisitions went, but still emotional and fraught. After Cottonwood Flats, the few people whose devotion to the Dayao version of worship was strong enough to withstand the social pressure of the nine towns left for volcano country. Given that the Dayao at the time were, a) in the middle of a period of internal strife in their royal house, b) under siege from a coalition of peoples who declined to be colonized, and c) fanatically racist, the exiles had most likely come to a bad end somewhere. 

The ones who remained to talk to Mines were the ones who rejected the Lodges with the same fervor that had led them to embrace them to begin with. Their accounts were, to borrow Corntassel’s phrase, “word purges.” Identifying and extracting useful details from them was not a simple task. Xellos acknowledged Garlic’s occasional trip up and down the porch steps with absent grunts, and failed even to hear greetings from the other side of the porch, if there were any. Few of the Warrior or Lamb songs had survived; even the most detailed confessions hesitated to quote actual words. But there was enough there for Xellos to recognize a system of honor: bravery, loyalty, obedience, strength. Warrior values. That language was not so strange to the Kesh as they liked to pretend.

Swallow and Worry announced their return by way of a scrabble and thump of feet on the porch steps and a complex and pungent bouquet of smells: dog, of course, but also horse, mud, herbs, and soap. The soap meant Swallow had stopped by the wash-house on the way back from digging in the reedbeds, a fact further verified by the cold, pink-tipped hand she set on Xellos’ shoulder in greeting. The horsey aroma most likely belonged to the clothes that she had not scrubbed down, and the other odors emanated from the basket of cattail shoots, fennel, and mushrooms that hung from her elbow. Any emotional cues he might have picked up from her were drowned in Worry’s squirming ecstasy as he tried to wriggle underneath Xellos’ knees , and by the time Worry calmed down, Swallow’s emotions had changed from whatever they had been as she walked up the steps.

He had not felt such a burst of fear and grief as this from her since they first walked together in the Volcano Country. The chill and cloying sweetness of it made his teeth ache . He looked up at her, startled, and saw her face gone tight and still. Her voice, when she spoke, was very flat and steady. “Is that _Confessions from a Time of Madness_ you have there, Coyote’s Son?”

“Indeed…” Why was she so upset? From what Xellos could gather, the book was held to be a powerful and “dangerous” one, but hardly taboo. Several of the Bay Laurel boys had described bits of it with great enthusiasm. “It came to me highly recommended. Have you read it yourself, Swallow?”

“Yes.” The short word came with a short, sharp glance sideways at the open door of Red Beams house. “I’m putting the food away and getting some clean clothes.” She kicked her shoes off toward the opposite corner of the porch but still managed to thump on her way inside. Xellos, following her, met Garlic’s eyes briefly as the old man looked up from his worktable, and shrugged. The old man took a wheezing breath and then bent over his work again. 

It took a bit of work to make changing clothes a noisy process, but Swallow made a creditable attempt, slamming the bench-chest lid and pitching the cast-off garments at an angle to make them thump softly against the rest of the laundry pile. When she re-emerged in the main room, she wore her other shirt and her skirt, and she had combed her hair until the ringlets dissolved into a puff of frizz and then tied it back in a topknot; she looked a little as if there were smoke coming out the top of her head. She barged back out through the main room, past Xellos, and onto the porch, thumping down onto the railing next to Xellos' usual nest. Worry got a good look at her and decided to go be somewhere else . Xellos joined her, curious and a little eager. This was, he suspected, a new round of their oldest argument, and, for a change, he was thinking clearly while she was not. A rare enough occurrence.

Swallow took a slow breath, in and out, flexing her fingers and tightening them on the railing she sat on. The anger that had been welling in her subsided, was buried deep under layers of discipline. The fear, still present, coalesced into a seed, or perhaps a pearl; contained. The top layer of Swallow’s emotional makeup now consisted primarily of curiosity, a neutral flavor. _She must have learned this from the Finders,_ Xellos thought, _or perhaps in the aftermath of the Pig Man_. Most humans had a hard time being open and closed at the same time, and, when threatened, answered with threats. A few, and it seemed Swallow was one of them, learned instead to put the self elsewhere and listen, without reacting . “Will you tell me,” she said, and her voice was the earnest, light one she used when talking their way into the hospitality of a townful of strangers, “what it is that you see, in the _Confessions?_ ”

Xellos smiled a little. “What you see is a warning, isn’t it? What can happen if decent Kesh go around lending their minds to twisted-neck foreigners?”

“That is, indeed, one thing that is there,” Swallow admitted.

Xellos let his own voice grow more serious, keeping his tone neutral to match hers. “I imagine that is a more comfortable warning to carry than the other one. Mines certainly seems to have chosen not to see it, writing this.”

“What warning do you see, then?” Swallow set her feet back on the floor of the porch and folded herself down to meet Xellos’ eye. She wadded one of Worry’s cushions up against the rail post and leaned against it, getting dog hair on her clean clothes.

Xellos answered her question with one of his own: “How many people went to Warrior or Lamb _wakwade,_ do you know? It can’t have been as many as one in ten, or Cottonwood Flats would not have been the end of the matter. One in twenty?”

“Something like that,” Garlic’s voice drifted out from the workroom. He usually pretended deafness around his two housemates, except at suppertime, but sometimes he liked to stick his oar in. “Counting the ones who were just curious, or were doing it because they had a friend who was into the whole thing, or because they didn’t like the Warriors but they didn’t like the Condor Men worse.”

“Perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred total, then, all through the valley,” Xellos said quietly.

“So?” There was no defiance in Swallow’s face or voice. But Xellos could read her deeper than that.

“So,” he said, “that is how many people, fifty years or so ago, had souls hungry for something the valley would not give them, and were drawn to a form of sacredness that the Kesh would not acknowledge.”

Swallow's gaze went down and her breath caught. The back of Xellos' mouth filled with the sweet, smoky flavor of sorrow and compassion mixed, permeating the anger they covered into something like barbequed meat. Perhaps Xellos should see if he could acquire some beet sugar and spices and produce a few barbequed chickens one of these days . He hadn't had anything of the kind since well before Choum-Rekwit; Kesh styles of slow-cookery generally involved wine rather than sweets… He was getting off-track, perhaps in self-defense. The last time Swallow had directed this particular mix of emotions his way, she'd been gearing up to tell him that he had failed to kill the City of Mind. The chances that she had another blow like that one ready to strike were tiny but nonzero. 

“Swallow?” One of his hands had found its way to a spot between her heaving shoulder blades while he wasn't paying attention. When had that gesture become a habit? 

“I forget,” Swallow whispered. “I let myself forget.” She drew her knees up until she could rest her forehead on them and circle them with her own arms. “They warned me. I warned me. And I still built a man I could love in my head, the one who'd stand up to my mother and kiss me when I was covered in dust or sheep's afterbirth, and make a pinworm of himself to teachers who got too full of themselves, and tell me about far-off countries… and I let myself forget how deep the sickness goes, how you stare at me from over your spine as you walk away...”

Xellos snorted and ground his teeth in irritation. “Oh, for void's sake, Swallow! A differing value system is not a pathology!” He had to use the Tok word, the machines’ language, to make his meaning clear. The Kesh word Swallow had used, _poye_ , was a verb more often than a noun, meaning, “not doing well,” and did not have fine distinctions. It could be applied to any form of discomfort: physical, mental, social, or moral, as well as to simple incompetence. The Kesh called the Dayao culture an infection: “the Sickness of Man.” Xellos thought it very odd that they were able to make do with one word for such a variety of phenomena, but then, Swallow thought the same of the word “love.” 

Anger bled through her grief, juicy as steak. Swallow jerked upright and glared at him. “It shitting well _is_ a pathology, you fourthson dung-eater! You think I don't know how fear and anger change the body? I've spent years unlearning those lessons!” In a single heave, she was on her feet again, pacing back and forth the length of the porch as though it were a cage. Xellos backed against the porch rail, then perched atop it when she came close to stepping on him anyway. “When fear and anger are at home in your body, you have room for nothing but fear and anger. There are thoughts you cannot think, actions you cannot take. Enoughness disappears. Anger and fear wind your spine until you can only sit bolt upright or cower like a mouse, nothing in between, and all your words become warnings and bargains, never gifts. And it spreads like a plague. Frightened parents frighten their children, until they think life is nothing but fearing and being feared. City of Man, what is all of that if not a disease?”

Xellos watched her pace and waited for the flood of words to recede, and then repeated, calmly and patiently, “Holiness. The erasure of the self and homage to the sublime. Awakening of the senses and the gratitude that springs only from the threat of loss. All those things you people hide under the White Clowns' robes and in the secrets of the Hunters' Lodge.”

“Liar.” The flat word hit him like a blow. She had never, never accused him of lying before. Sworn at him, yes. Called him names, told him he was wrong, or stupid. Never pretended he didn’t speak truth.

“I am not.” Xellos bit out. “They are there, hidden, disrespected, but vital all the same.”

“Horseshit!” Swallow shouted at him. “Fear and grief and solitude and awe, yes, you can find those in the Sun and among the Hunters and in the private _wakwade_ people make for themselves at need, but that’s not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about power and compulsion. You’re talking about the thing that goes beyond consent and only feeds on what hasn’t been given! That is not holiness. It is addiction.”

“Who is speaking with your mouth, there?” Xellos asked coolly. “Those aren’t your own thoughts; I doubt you’ve spent as much as an hour contemplating the ineffable in the last year. Is it Gall you’re parroting? Mouse Dance?”

“Me, maybe.” Garlic said from the doorway. “Does it matter who gave her the words if she kept them? What’s got you two set off again? Swallow: you let him carry on with Gall and then you yell at him over which book he’s reading?” The old man clicked his tongue and shook his head.

Swallow huffed air. “Whatever happens with us and Gall I can live with,” she said. “If Xellos is trying to spread the Sickness of Man into the valley again, then I have to stop him.”

“By arguing him back into health?” Garlic tossed his head a little and rolled his eyes, then focused on Xellos. “You, boy.” He pointed a knobbly finger. “Are you trying to spread a plague?”

Xellos smiled thinly. “I would be foolish to admit any such thing, would I not? I am trying to be true to my obligations, and myself. And I do not imagine Swallow could do much to stop me in any case.” He turned to face Swallow. “What do you think you’re going to do, after all? Are you planning to kill me, and hope it doesn't kill you too? You've already taken my great victory from me. What else do you think you can threaten me with, to make me do what you want?”

“Does it always have to be threats?” Swallow wailed. She did not point out that it wasn't she that had taken the victory. The failure of the Carrion Gyre would still have been a failure, no matter what she'd done or hadn't.

Xellos really did have some stirring of pity for her, as for a child who wanted a pet lion cub. But he could not betray Lord Beastmaster to that extent. If Swallow wanted him to break discipline and abandon the Cause, she must leave him no other choice, not even death. “If you want to bribe me, the price will be high,” he warned her. Very high. If she wanted to change the very shape of his soul, she would have to do the same. _But hasn't she already? Would her mother be Still Learning, rather than Agate, if Swallow had not changed?_ The little voice in his head sounded a lot like Gall. Stupid meat-jelly brains – all these pulses and echoes, so nothing could be singular and everything set off connections. 

Swallow took another breath and looked him in the eyes, her expression going determined. “Well,” she said, “There is in fact one more thing I can take away.”

“Yourself? Are you going to try and snap the bond again?”

“No. _Your_ self.”

“Killing me, in other words.”

“Not quite.” Swallow looked down at her hands, and then back at Xellos again. “Now that the Exchange is lighting up,” she said, “I can ask it for help. It can give me a map of a human brain, and which parts do what, and which injuries have what effect. So I don't have to vaporize your whole brain. If I took the frontal lobes, you'd be in a state like old Bibi, say, after the vedet progressed to that degree. Or like Fefinum. No, not Fefinum, someone simpler. A himpi. You'd know if you were warm or cold, hungry or full, and maybe you'd recognize a few faces here and there. You'd be even more work than you are now, but less dangerous. But if I'm lucky, I can just destroy the part that holds your old memories, and not the parts that know how to do things like talk and walk and read.” 

Xellos went cold all over, feeling as if she really had wiped him blank, right then and there. “You'd...”

“I'd do it while you slept. You'd wake up confused, and I'd tell you, 'Egret, you were hurt in a war, a long way from here, and then you ran away to the valley. You've been very sick for a long time, and it's affected your memory, but now you're better and all of us here in the valley will help you.' And we would. You'd learn the songs and take our gifts. I think you'd be happy. Maybe a little boring, from my point of view, without your connections to the outside, without the things you know... Maybe I'd tell you you'd come to the valley as my brother and that you were going to marry Gall.” 

“My...my,” Xellos croaked. _Curse_ Swallow and her doctors' training! Curse them to Cepheid's throne and the prison underneath it! Even the most effective memory wiping spell Xellos knew would not destroy a person as thoroughly as what Swallow was promising. Memories could be buried, be hidden, be disguised. But there was always the danger that an inconvenient parent or sibling or One True Love would find the right key and open the vault. But Swallow could destroy the vault... and Xellos couldn't even decide whether her willingness to contemplate such an act was a victory or a defeat. “My, my” he said again. “That... that sounds rather extreme.” 

“Yes.” Swallow's eyes focused on him once more, instead of her imaginary scenario. “It's not my first choice. I _like_ your memories, some of them. And of course there's the risk I'll aim wrong and leave you crippled inside, not just scarred, and end up stuck with a human himpi. But if you decide you would rather die than change, that's the death you're looking at.”

“I... see...”

Garlic threw his hands in the air. “So melodramatic, you two! Whatever’s going on with you, you have to bring life and death and the end of the world in… I realize I’m only a dull old man, but I think you what you need is some days away from each other to clear your heads.” 

Xellos snickered to himself. Garlic was… not wrong, but he tended to forget or ignore the less comfortable realities of his and Swallow’s relationship: not only the bond that kept them circling each other, but the magic that raised the stakes. Garlic, he thought, did not quite believe that Xellos meant to do what he meant to do, nor that Swallow could carry through on her threats. 

Swallow, though… Swallow wilted. “I think you are right about that, Garlic. I think I will sleep in the heyimas tonight, and tomorrow I’ll go walking on the mountain. Xellos, don’t follow me out until you have to, please.”

She thumped back up the porch steps again, moving slowly and heavily, to give Garlic a brief hug. Then she turned again, head hanging with weariness, and walked away down the path that led to the Dancing Place and the heyimas beyond.

Xellos watched her go. There was still a tuft of dog hair decorating the back of her shirt, he noticed, and she had left her shoes behind.


	25. Into Coyote's House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next one both have quite a few callbacks to the previous work in this series, _Hinges and Gyres._ The relevant moments are in chapters 2 and 3.

Garlic shook his head again, looking at Swallow's retreating back, then rolled his shoulders and stretched his back. “I've been sitting too long,” he announced, “and so have you, boy. Come out to the garden with me?”

By which Garlic meant he still wanted to talk, Xellos thought. He himself felt he had had rather a surfeit of talk just now, but the need for movement was there, since his… his master? His co-thrall? Since Swallow had roused him so thoroughly out of his studious trance. Also the need to empty the bladder again, but he'd do that at the edge of the garden, to deter squirrels. “Very well.”

Even Swallow's dedicated and precise spells of destruction were not enough to wholly intimidate the weed population at this time of year, and she had been busy with other tasks for the last nineday or so. Garlic chopped with a hoe while Xellos gathered and wound up long yards of Morning Glory and Stickyweed that seemed to have appeared overnight. 

“You actually handle her pretty well,” Garlic told Xellos after half an hour or so of silence. “Have all your _haibid_ been so passionate?

Xellos considered Martina, and Filia, and Lina, not all of whom had been sweethearts exactly, but, “Enough of them,” Xellos said.

“She would almost certainly have joined the Lambs herself, had they been around when she was fifteen,” Garlic chuckled. 

“As she knows,” Xellos agreed, “Which is one reason she is so frightened now.”

Garlic nodded and wheezed and dragged his hoe ineffectually against a little tuft of goatshead thorn that had settled at the base of a dillweed clump. “Was this last fight really about what it was about?” he asked curiously.

Xellos wasn't entirely certain the question required an answer. He yanked at the wiry morning glory stems, winding them around his hand and watching part of his own mind trying to wriggle its way around the new trap it found itself in. Death before defeat, yes. He had said, a year or so ago, that if his death was the thing it took to Turn Swallow, then that was worthwhile. And to erase a mind, well, that was a black act. To erase one mind to keep from Turning the whole valley, though… and even now, she still wouldn't or couldn't draw power from anyone's pain but Xellos'. He tried to imagine the future life of amnesiac Egret: would there be enough pain, enough fear there to corrupt her? Certainly at first there would be… was it worth the risk?

“I mean,” Garlic pressed, having finally beheaded the thorn, “it's really this business of Dayao- or Mazoku- _wakwade_ that's got her threatening murder, not your affair with Gall or… oh, something in the Doctors' Lodge that has her on edge, say?”

Xellos shrugged. “Gall,” he said carefully, “is a means to an end for me, and I for her, I believe. Swallow knows this, and it is my ends, not the means, that she objects to. Well, and now she's afraid for Gall, too, but yes, our primary conflict may be characterized as religious.”

“And Mazoku religion is all about the ends, isn't it? Am I remembering right? Your Great Cause?” 

Xellos smiled. “In the most literal way possible, yes.”  
“A good Mazoku is one who obeys their master and tries to destroy the world?”

“Indeed.”

Garlic rubbed at his forehead. “Well,” he said, “but what did that mean? What did you actually do?” He used the form of the word _you_ that meant, "you, individually," not "all you people." 

Xellos dumped his armload of weeds on the midden heap. “I talked to people, mostly. I tracked down powerful artifacts and acquired or destroyed them, depending on the circumstances. I persuaded people of power into taking foolish risks. Now and then, I fought. That wasn't required of me very often, this last century or two.” He stroked his chin, smelled, bitter vinesap. Looked up and grinned. “I’m quite deadly when so required, however.”

Garlic snorted laughter. “You were a Finder,” he said.

“Among other things,” Xellos agreed peaceably.

“From what I've heard,” said Garlic, “you did things the Finders' way even when some other way might have worked better. Even now, when you're trying to infect the Valley – if that's really what you're trying to do – you're doing it the Finders' way: telling people what they want to hear and so on. When anyone could see other ways might be faster and more effective.”

Xellos goggled briefly at the old man, hands slack at his side, and bit back a wordy defense of his strategic choices. He was not answerable to Garlic.

“Funny,” Garlic said, “How easy it is to imagine that the end is more real than the middle.”

 

*****

Swallow had said she was going to spend the night in the Serpentine heyimas, but shortly after midday Xellos felt the tug of the bond, light and itchy as a spiderweb, as she made her way up into the hills somewhere to begin her… you couldn’t quite call it a pilgrimage, nor a vacation. Her spiritually-motivated solo camping trip. Garlic’s joints bothered him and he left Xellos to finish the weeding (insofar as weeding ever is finished) alone. Worry came up, wagging his tail and fawning anxiously; Xellos sent him away again when he realized the dog’s anxiety and his own tension were feeding each other. He tried to concentrate on strategy again and the body intruded with unusual intensity: The ground pressed up under his feet, the sun heated the hair on his neck; the edges of his kilt tapped his knees. The body objected strongly to all these thoughts of death. 

But it wouldn’t be that kind of death, Xellos reminded himself. The greedy body could go on doing what it did. What would be lost would be a… a memory. Or a principle, or a choice. Lost, or passed on to Swallow? _And do I trust her yet to use that choice toward Lord Beastmaster’s ends?_

He went and found Gall by the Good Sitting Place. He would drug the body with sex, leave it sated and dull. He would tempt his mind with visions of Gall and Swallow as Priestesses of Zelas; a reminder of what was possible. There was no one nearby enough to see. Xellos ran a hand down Gall’s neck and along the line of her shoulder. “Swallow has taken herself away for the day,” he informed her.

Gall slapped his hand away. “What do you think you’re doing? I thought we were going to dance the Moon together!” She straightened abruptly, plunking her feet down into the waters of Fern Creek and wading out far enough to damp the edge of her skirt.

“The Moon,” Xellos pointed out, “is ten days from now. They have only just begun the singing.” He would be joining it, probably in a day or two: partly in compliance with both _haibis’_ expectations and partly as an experiment, to see how much fuss everyone else kicked up. “Nothing we do today would prevent us from meeting then as well.”

“You know perfectly well,” Gall insisted, “That everyone who’s going to dance the Moon stays celibate beforehand.”

“Everyone knows that. And so they will not see that we are not doing so if we aren’t obvious about it. And so we assert our freedom from the rules that don’t mean anything and our allegiance to the things that matter.” _Come on, Gall, just a little further…_

But Gall was Kesh. She edged out and then came back – not full circle, never quite, but never out to that cold edge of the new, the true boundary of freedom. “The Moon is risk and trust both,” she said – the usual platitude – “and the trust lasts longer than the wakwa does. And so does its loss: you’ve seen what’s happened to Careful and his buddies since they went after Swallow that way, year before last?”

Xellos had to admit he had paid only cursory attention to the little troupe, once it had become clear that they were not in a position to be much of a threat to Swallow, even politically. However… Two of them had moved to other towns. Careful lived with his mother and came to very few of the _wakwade,_ even for the ones from their own House. Almost nobody mentioned him, even to gossip; he had made himself a nonentity.

“I’ll dance with you at the Moon,” Gall repeated, and splashed her way upstream, then turned back to call over her shoulder. “And not after that, I think.” Xellos turned away back toward town, frustrated.

 

*****

By sunset, the physical tug of the bond was not a spiderweb, but a fishing line: fine, taut, and thrumming. Out of mercy to him – or more likely to herself – Swallow had chosen a camping place somewhere right at the edge of their range, whatever it was right now – two or three miles, perhaps? Not more than that, surely, with the amount of anger and pain there was between them right now. Xellos twitched through supper with Garlic and then went out to pace. _Don't come until you have to_ , she'd told him, and he didn't have to yet: he was stronger than that, but thoughts were traveling in tight, jerky circles … _she'll kill me, the body and the mind separated at last, no, merged more completely, with the body in charge, what a horrible thing to do, will it take her where I want it to, she's right over there, don't come until I have to, she'll kill me…_ He was not going to be able to sleep, and he doubted Swallow was either. He couldn't go to her, yet, he couldn't think… He paced around the edges of the Dancing Place, watched the beaten-copper moon at the top of the Obsidian Heyimas disappear and return to view as someone climbed out the top and headed down the stairs. The Moon singing was going on. That would be something to do. He slipped back uphill to Red Beams, to grab his heyimas vest. The pull of the bond grew sharper with every step.

By the time he made it back down to the Dancing Place, (the bond easing its tug, but not much) he had changed his mind about singing the Moon. He did not wish to be in company, was not alert enough to insinuate himself into a place he was not entirely welcome, did not wish to think of the Moon, or of Gall, who had decided to end things. He could make her change her mind… he did not know what to do, but he wasn't going to sing the Moon right now. Instead, he mounted the steps and descended the ladder for the Blue Clay heyimas. 

Blue Clay was a lot quieter, though far from silent. A pair of Hunters – Blue Horse and a man Xellos didn't remember the name – of nodded to him as he stepped off the ladder to the first level and took his place, going up. The scholar Rainshadow shuffled by, putting things on shelves. Xellos stood thinking for a while, then made his way down to the lower level of the heyimas, through the little warren of storage rooms, and borrowed a tool he normally had very little use for.

One of the many functions of a drum in Kesh life was to provide the drummer with a measure of privacy. When a household always had more people than rooms, when workshops and bathing facilities were held in common, where four songs out of five required at least two singers, privacy was a matter of convention and absorption in particular tasks. Drumming could be a communal activity, too, but a drummer on the Hunting Side, or sitting in an out-of-the way spot in or on of one of the heyimas, was generally left alone unless they invited company. So Xellos, who was still inclined to think that all this music was a bit silly, nonetheless borrowed a drum. He chose a pattern so syncopated as to be nonexistent, and a spot near the spare potters' wheels, and he might as well have been back in his own astral pocket. As one noted Serpentine visionary had said, “it was the silence inside the drumming that I wanted.” 

The pull of the bond had eased; either the few hundred yards' difference between the heyimas and Red Beams House had been enough, or Swallow had moved a little closer in, or Xellos' choice of coping mechanism was Kesh enough to put the two of them more in sympathy with each other. It didn't matter. He needed, as Garlic had told him, to clear his head.

After a vague, timeless time in which he thought only of making noises with the drum, he decided his discomfort was recursive: he was upset about how upset he was. He remembered, very clearly, coming to awareness of himself at the steps of the Caldera God Monument, and the shattering moment when he understood, with terrible exactitude, exactly what had happened to him. Swallow had asked him then if he'd wanted to die, and he had. He'd been prepared to die in the great rush of power from the corrupted Carrion Gyre; to be present at all afterward had been irritating and a bit humiliating, as with any plan gone not quite right. To find himself human as well had been utter degradation, and he had wanted to die of shame, in expiation for the imperfect execution of his orders. He'd been trying to make up for that ever since, really… he'd been ready to die any time Swallow was willing to murder him and take up the Cause, except, now it was before him, that choice, and he found himself unable to choose it.

Lord Beastmaster's last orders to him, Xellos reminded himself, had been to see to the destruction of the Terrestrial Cybernet, according to the plan he suggested. Except he had failed in his previous mission, of intelligence gathering, and the plan had been faulty. And then… no. Those hadn't been Her last orders, had they? She had come to him once more, during his first night as a human. What had she said then? She had come to him in Her most complete form, that humans could not perceive wholly, as a Queen and a Carrion Eater, elegant and bestial. And she had… she had expressed surprise and amusement at the outcome of the Gyre. She had asked him, _SHALL I REWARD YOU? DO YOU WISH TO DIE?_ She had promised to consume his soul and keep him from the cycle of reincarnation that had corrupted Gaav the Traitor. And She had… _she had given no orders!_ She had gone away from him and left him with no direction! 

She had not told him to do anything with Swallow, though She had to have been aware of the magical bond between them, even if they themselves had not yet. Xellos had decided on that course of action himself, a day or two later. She had dismissed him. She had no further use for him and… To his confusion, Xellos found himself unable to breathe through his nose. It took him a few more moments to understand that he had been crying. He wiped his face on the tail of his shirt and returned to drumming. He was missing something. Something She had said. The very last thing, before She vanished into dreams… Not Zelas the Queen, but the Great Beast, in a form suited to the surrounding landscape. The Aspect of Her that the Kesh called Coyote had lingered a little longer, and she had said… had said… Her last orders were…. Xellos drummed, trying to both still his mind and dig deeper.

_Yai-ho yau, Two-legs, have fun!_

And then She had gone.

That was just confusing. What in the void was he supposed to do with that?

There was a sound of yipping laughter. _I dunno, kiddo. Sounds pretty straightforward to me._

Xellos looked up, startled, into Her yellow-green eyes. The space around them did not seem to be the Blue Clay storeroom, nor any other place. It was the dark blue of late evening, this place, and a wind blew – gently, for the most part, sometime gusty. There was a sense of distance around them, of openness. She had chosen an in-between form for this liminal space: neither the white-clad, bejeweled Lord Beastmaster, not the scrawny, dusty Coyote. Her body resembled a human woman’s, with raw, rangy bones, her hair was the yellow-dun of a coyote’s fur, not much longer. Two copper bobs hung from Her pointed ears and Her tail frisked. Claws tipped Her human hands. Her cleft upper lip curved in a permanent smile under a black-tipped nose.

Xellos scrambled up from the seated position to kneel before Her, bowing his head and exposing the nape of his neck. “Commander.”

Her voice sounded higher-pitched than usual: it had a singing, yapping note to it. “Commander?’ I like that. That’s cute.”

There was no ground beneath them, only buffeting air. Xellos fought a sudden wave of dizziness and tilted his head up to look at Her. “Lord Beastmaster? Surely I cannot have mistaken You…” Surely, surely the last two and a half years had not so damaged him that he could mistake some other, lesser creature for Her? But when he’d addressed her...

“Of course I know you, kiddo,” she said gently, which didn’t exactly answer the question… “What’s wrong?”

Xellos grinned and sat back on his heels. This was a mazoku joke. “Everything, of course! This world is an abomination, full of corruption and arrogance and puling false gods!” He let the grin fade a little and shrugged. “Also, I have lost my power and no longer know how to fulfill my mission. My usual improvisations have not been fruitful.”

Her arms grew longer. She bent and stretched like a dog, her bottom in the air. “Always something going on,” she agreed, “Which mission?”

_“The_ mission!” Xellos promised himself he would not whine. She was his mother, insofar as he had such a thing, but he need not be a child. “We mazoku are the destroyers. Through our own strength and will, we will unmake the world of illusions and let the pure golden light of Chaos shine!”

She laughed Her high, yipping laugh, Her eyes glowing mineral green. “Oh, yes, every bit of it, we’ll destroy. None of it will last; it’s all dying now.” Then She blinked. The whole world seemed to vanish for that one instant, as if Xellos were seeing it only through Her eyes. “Or did you mean all of it at once? That’s a BIG job!”

 

Xellos clenched his hands. “Don't joke about it,” he pled. “Not now, with me. Not when I pledged the whole of my existence to You, up to and including my death. You gave me my orders; don't pretend they were nothing, now!”

“Dying's a big job, too,” She said. “Most people need help with it.”

“What do You want of me!” Xellos cried, “I am trying to obey You, my creator! Will You punish me for my great error with the Carrion Gyre? Or tell me how to fix it?” He should not have had to ask. He had been one of Her most valued operatives precisely because he so seldom needed instructions. But he had been defeated: by the City, by his thrall, by the whole of his life apart from Her. If he were to serve Her properly, he must be humble enough to beg Her aid.

She tilted her head back and spoke in a long, singing howl that might have held laughter or tears. “Aiyaiyao, Two-legs, you really are confused, aren't you?” She shook Her head hard as if to dislodge a flea, the copper earbobs blurring into little halos. 

_“What do You want of me?”_ Xellos repeated.

She growled in irritation. “I hate going backward,” She complained. “Go to Hawk's house, if you want times-that-used-to-be.” She inflated Her lungs, reshaped Her mouth so that she could purse her lips, and blew. The gust tumbled Xellos up and backward into the air, made his cloak (he was wearing his cloak now, it seemed) billow and snap behind him. Her voice fell away, but he heard Her laughing still. _“Pay attention this time, Two-legs!” ___


	26. Out of Hawk's House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem quoted near the end of this chapter is from "The Shouting Man, the Red Woman, and the Bears," in _Always Coming Home,_ by Ursula K. LeGuin.

Xellos tumbled through emptiness, buffeted by the winds around him. _I will dance on the winds of change._ So he had promised himself, once upon a time. But his arms flailed and his feet tripped on surging gusts. He tucked himself into a ball and spun: thirteen breathless somersaults, then unfolded to his full length, arms reaching over his head and toes pointed. His hands met something they could grab onto: something hard, knobbled but smooth to the touch, perhaps a three fingers’ width in diameter. He caught the thing, felt the jar in his shoulders as he swung around, back and forth like a pendulum, his cloak snapping around him, gradually slowing until he simply dangled and the winds fell silent. Looking up, he was unsurprised to recognize his staff, whole again. The ruby glowed with power. The other end lodged firmly in a crack in the fabric of reality. Xellos dangled, looking around. 

This was, most decidedly, the astral plane. Power and time and space swirled in eddies around him in slow, shimmering spirals. A hawk circled on one thermal, circling around Xellos at a distance, at the level of his feet, then his chest, then higher. One golden eye stayed focused on him the whole time. Xellos watched it circle up until its circuit was obscured by the light of the ruby in the staff, and then he heard it scream.

_What are you doing here?_

Xellos smirked. “Just hanging around. Coyote sent me.”

The hawk stooped and dived, aiming straight at Xellos with talons extended. He closed his eyes and tried to draw on the power of the ruby, something to shield himself, to deflect the bird. Nothing. The Hawk slammed into his chest and through it, clutching something… holding Xellos by his shoulders, he realized. His consciousness had split in two. Xellos-who-watched saw the Hawk bear Xellos-who-was down to a single eddy of time which rose to meet them all.

This was the Carrion Gyre, Xellos-who-watched saw, after a moment. The Carrion Gyre as seen from the Astral plane, with Xellos-who-was and the lesser mazoku waiting for the spell to build. There was power, flowing like water. There were channels of intent, of habit and discipline, open and waiting for the flood. The power geysered out. The assembled mazoku moved into the pattern. Xellos-who-was took Swallow’s hand. The dams broke.

The dams broke, and the power flowed through the deepest channel, the heyiya-if. The shape of Swallow's soul, and of every soul in the whole Na valley. Turn in and reverse and go out. He could feel the snap, Xellos-who-was being spun apart, dissolving into the flow of the spell, ready to reverse the very poles of the earth. Anything that cause needed, he took; he gave. On the astral plane, the beings Swallow knew as “bears” gathered. Powerful, snarling, death embodied. They danced around Xellos-who-was and the lesser mazoku, tearing them to pieces. Xellos-who-watched felt the teeth in his neck and belly, felt the pull on his arms as they tugged. He clenched his hands tighter around the staff, holding on. Power leaked out of the holes the teeth had made.

_Pay attention this time!_ Her voice was in his memory this time, not the ears of either of himselves. He didn’t know where the next words came from: _The main channel is not the only one._ Xellos-who-watched perceived, for the first time, what had happened to the pieces his great spell didn't need. Little bits of curiosity, a fondness for verbal games, a couple of millenia worth of memories- what did a magnetic pole need with memories? The heyiya-canyon filled, with these little bits skidding along the top of the flowing waters. The spell was uninterested in flotsam. Power and pain moved through the deep channel, flooded it, and the… the other things were pushed upstream, into the smaller tributaries that fed it.

Because on top of the ingrained sense of how the world worked, of course Swallow had her own, ordinary human needs and desires, that had their own shapes and wore their own grooves. _Another good friend or two- a husband, even. Someone perceptive, and interesting to talk to. A better sense of humor than Careful has. Someone who will let me be the Finder I am and will let me grow into the person I become next._ Xellos-who-was had tried to use those desires to his own ends more than once, with only limited success, because there was another requirement as well, one that fed from a source deeper than the desires of one human lifetime, back into the Kesh community. _A partner. One who gives, receives, relates..._

On the surface of the churning waters, the ephemeral remains of a personality began to drift toward the lighter pull of that other channel, letting it shape them. And then came a wave that pushed them further in, sent them all spinning into this new shape. Gourry, Amelia, Zelgadis, and most of all Lina, whose will was strong enough to shape even the Golden One's power in small ways, they had joined together with a different purpose in mind, one that Xellos had usurped; even as the power spun away from their control, that other intention, too, had momentum behind it. Especially on the surface, where the current wasn't so strong. _We want our friend to be human._ And so he was. Himself and the chimera boy both, more or less. They had made a human out of everything Xellos left behind. He had been made new. Not by Lord Beastmaster, but by the Inverse and her friends. And Swallow. 

The tie between Xellos-who-was and Xellos-who-watched, the draining power and the blows from the Death-Bears’ reaching paws, these had already weakened the staff that Xellos-who-watched clung to. The weight of this new realization snapped it completely. _I tried to destroy my creator._ He could weasel-word his way around his efforts with Swallow, but that was the truth and he knew it – he had been trying to undo almost everything she was to make her more like the Master he remembered. _A betrayal worthy of that damned bravo Gaav._

Xellos-who-watched let go of the broken staff as it fell. Xellos-who-was still clung to it, collapsed on the ground at the base of the Caldera God Monument. Power flowed out of the staff, still, and out of the invisible holes and rakes the Death-Bears had made. It flowed into the spell, and into Swallow. Something else seeped in through the holes and channels that had been left empty. Something heavy, that tasted of metal and salt. Something warmer and murkier than the clear, cold power. Xellos-who-watched tumbled through the still, empty air and came to a stop in a place he did not recognize. There was very little of him left, now that he had let go. He was tiny, boneless, fragile. His cloak was a mere lacework tissue. Yet the air held him up. There was room to move, freedom to move in any direction; up, down, in, out, across, around… Nothing would stop him. He could choose. He could rest, on slender wisps of grass, as temporary as himself. He could move. He could hunt. Death lay waiting all around in that still air: in the rainclouds that might spill and batter him down, in the great creatures that hunted beings such as himself, in the disappearance of the things that sustained him. Death was everywhere. _That’s true,_ another soul told him. There were souls all around him, tiny and electric blue. _That’s true, but we all know the shape of the dance._

_I will dance on that wind,_ Xellos promised himself again. When he tried, though, the wind was too strong for this lacewing self. He was tumbling, spinning, downward and inward toward the rest of him. The heavy, metallic taste of whatever it was that was taking the place of the leaking power grew stronger in the mouth that he more definitely had. His vision grew tinged with red. He recognized the shape of his limbs from the growing weight of them. He couldn’t see Her, Coyote, who both was and was not Lord Beastmaster, but She was there. Her voice sang behind his ears: _You’re learning, Kiddo. Just pay attention._

The bears were dancing in front of him, fierce, snarling, death embodied. Now that he was back in a house of earth, he could see the carved wooden masks, held on poles, and the dancers under them. The troupe of actors who made their home in Chulkumas had chosen the open space just past the storeroom door for their rehearsal. Xellos kept drumming. He'd fallen in with the pattern for the Bears Dance at some point, but the other musicians made no attempt to interact with him. He left off drumming and just sat, thinking. 

_Just how many paradoxes and ironies have we managed to build up, here?_

He had, out of loyalty to his creator, exiled himself from Her presence and service. His eagerness to serve had, in fact, led him to overlook some key data that would have probably rendered that sacrifice inadvisable. _That's irony, not paradox, though._ His creator had, in turn, promised to make sure he stayed dead when the time came, as both a reward for his loyalty and as a preventative measure against possible betrayal. Except, since he'd failed so spectacularly, She might revoke that promise and leave him to reincarnate. Except then the risk of betrayal would be greater. _Which is a little more like a paradox, and I'm not entirely looking forward to seeing how She resolves it._

All that touched on another question to which the answer was both yes and no: _do you want to live?_ Xellos shied away from that one for the moment.  <

_And there's the paradox of my having, though no fault – well, fault, but no intention of my own, two creators._ Did he owe loyalty to both? To what degree? He had done his best, in the odd, backwards fashion forced on both of them by the Carrion Gyre, to serve Swallow as he did Lord Beastmaster; by channeling power to her, through sacrifice. She didn't want any of it, including the necessary proximity to his misery. As he had known from the beginning, but he'd been faithful to the idea that power corrupted. Give a thrall/master enough power, and they would crave more. The Kesh were unacquainted with that kind of power and wouldn't have any defenses. 

Wrong. The Kesh knew how to turn a wooden wheel in a stream and a copper one on the bank into a lightning bolt, and then use the lightning bolt to turn other wheels in other buildings. They knew a lot about power. They had protocols for dealing with it: keep it grounded, distribute the load. The greatest agony of his long existence had succeeded in turning Swallow the Finder into Toudou the Doctor, but had not made a substitute mazoku of her. _And if I succeeded, with only one, mortal food source, Swallow be no stronger than Tabes at best: a footsoldier in a part of the world with no strategic value whatsoever._ And that was assuming the question of strategy was an appropriate one. 

Well, he could keep going. His loyalty was everything to him, and he could be loyal in the mazoku fashion and make them both miserable and magical. Even at reduced power, it would be an act in the support of Lord Beastmaster, and the Greater Lords above Her. Steadfast and unchanging, in the service of Chaos. I'll cling to what I know, follow all the rules exactly... that thought wasn't ending quite right, somehow. All those plans, all those fervent evocations of the final end, the moment of absolute victory, when the world would return to Chaos and everything would be... settled? Finished? That really didn't sound very much like chaos, did it?

The other choice, which Swallow would certainly prefer he make, would be to leave his first Master as she had dismissed him, and serve his second by finding ways to be, and to make her, happy. To live, as she said, as a human among humans and let the mazoku he had been die. As he already had in the vision. Only, his impetus for doing so sprang from mazoku loyalty. If the mazoku died, what tied him to his Pact-thrall? Actually, supposing he still chose Lord Beastmaster, given Swallow's use of the power he gave her, did it make more sense to try and diminish it? _This would be so much easier if she'd just claimed me as her thrall at the beginning of it all._ If she'd said, “Love me, be my servant,” in those first few days when the power had flowed through her so strongly, Xellos knew he would have obeyed. She hadn't said that. She'd said, “we'll go on together,” and she'd said, “choose.”

He'd given her power, and she'd let the power flow away as fast as he could replace it, in all his grief and misery. She'd sent death to cancers, spiders, unwanted pregnancies and treasured illusions. And turned back to him and said, “forcing all the hard choices on someone else is a slave's trick. Grow up.” When he'd tried to hurt her, tried to break the bond, she'd turned to the goats and the mules and the dogs for acceptance, made friends as she could, and said, “choose.” _I don't know if I can. All the will I had, I put into shaping the Carrion Gyre, and I don't know if any of it came back. I don't know if I ever knew how to choose for myself, not for Her._ But Swallow had, in her own way, been as merciless in her one command as Lord Beastmaster had been with her many. _Choose._

Xellos unfolded himself stiffly and made his way over to the other storeroom to put the drum away. He had to squeeze his way past Clayface and Moonshadow, who had perched on one of the low shelf sets and were running lines from the play:

_In ignorance,_  
_Unskillfully,_  
_heya, heya_  
_In the darkness_  
_In the silence,_  
_heya, heya..._

Xellos stood still there, thinking. The world is remade nine times every heartbeat. That was a Klatsaand saying Swallow had picked up. The Kesh didn’t use it often. It was true, though, and so had he been. With capabilities he barely knew how to use, together with centuries of experience nobody wanted.

“All of the time, You are dying, Having no power- Ah, crud,” Clayface said from the corner.

Moonshadow corrected him: “So you make-”

“Oh, right. All of the time, You are dying, So you make soul, not knowing how”

Moonshadow joined in, “Having no power, So you have life”

_Not going on,_  
_So you go on._  
_Dying you live,_  
_All of the time...”_

Xellos/Coyote's Son/Aspen/Camas Top/Whitesnake/Clown Dog/Swallow's Man straightened out of his crouch and stood there, laughing. “All right, all right!” he said to whoever was listening. “You don't have to make it that obvious!” The actors looked up at him, bewildered, then shrugged and went back to work. He splashed his face in the fountain in the main chamber of the Blue Clay Heyimas, clambered up the ladders and ran down the stairs and headed out into the Dancing Place, aiming for Red Beams House. The sun shone bright and piercing, casting midmorning shadows. Xellos had passed the entire night in the vision, in Coyote's and Hawk’s houses. His stomach growled, and he was thirsty. 

As he passed the Hinge, Worry looked up with a bark and followed at his heels. The mazoku did not, after all, have a monopoly on loyalty. He could change without changing into something he wasn't. Coyote's wind still blew somewhere under his feet, lightening whatever burdens he still had left and chasing years' worth of uncertainties away. _I can just make it up as I go along, the way everyone else does. I've got another fifty-something years or so to figure it out._

Garlic looked up as his pale nephew closed the door, humming, and pulled two gourd canteens from where they hung on the wall. “Got yourself sorted out then, boy?”

Clear purple eyes met the cloudy brown ones over the junior man's shoulder as he began filling the canteens from the pump. “For now, at least. But I need to go to Swallow. She didn't take her canteen with her.” 

“Good idea.” Garlic nodded to himself a few times, then added, “add some ginger in each one. Helps soften the water so it doesn't make you sick if you drink a lot at once. Just in case she's been sitting in the sun all this time.”

“Right.” Xellos stopped to use the toilet and wash his hands, then ducked into his and Swallow's room to grab a hat. Back in the main room, he rummaged on the pantry shelf for any portable food, choosing some dried strawberries and a square of cornbread. He shoved another piece of cornbread in his mouth, and stepped out on the porch, feeling for the bond. _That way._ The pull was strong enough now that he found himself stepping into his nest corner rather than to the steps. Briefly, he glanced down at his feet in their rope-soled sandals among the carefully sorted pieces of the Map. One possible configuration of the pieces sat in the frame-lid of the box, looking precise and insignificant. _I didn't leave anything out, after all,_ he realized. _It's just not home anymore._

Don't come to me until you have to, she'd said, but it was time. Swallow was still resisting the pull of their bond, not moving from wherever she was, but it was growing painful. The more so for the flood of unsaid words he had stored up. I owe you so much, girl... Xellos headed out the door again, forgetting to take off his heyimas vest in his hurry, and started out toward the hunting side at a trot. Worry joined him again, tail flagged and ears pricked. _What else is there to do, except go on together?_

He found her: not all that far from town, sitting on one of the Lakwanwe boulders and looking out at the scrublands where nothing in the spring sunlight moved, herself included. She must have been spiraling inward, trying to keep the headaches at bay. At the sound of approaching footsteps, a lizard scurried away from her leg where it had been sunning itself. He scrambled up next to her and patted her hand, offering one of the canteens. Swallow raised her head wearily, and accepted the canteen as though it weighed four times as much as it did. She did not drink. Her voice was tired sounding, dry and papery. “So you are here, Xellos.”

Her husband shook his head, unsmiling. “Not any longer. My name is Dragonfly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, folks... this fic has taken me longer than anything else I've ever worked on, and by that I mean the earliest version is one I started back before I'd seen _Try_ for the first time. So.... not _quite_ twenty years. That version had, among other regrettable choices, Swallow/Wehisho as a skilled knife fighter and some creatures called Djinni who were behind the unintended consequences of the Carrion Gyre. 
> 
> Most of the core goals have stayed the same, though: Bring the Slayers into Coyote Country. Point out the contradictions involved in the Mazoku version of chaotic evil. (Both of which goals are probably better accomplished by "A Man of Coyote's House," using approximately 1% of the word count for this monster, but oh, well.) Later on I added some other goals, such as, "Avoid the Magical Healing Brown People trope." Still not sure how well I did on that one. All the same, I like this version of what Xellos' troublemaking gets him, and I'm glad to have had a chance to send my head off to the Na Valley again for a while and hope some other people feel the same.
> 
> If I haven't completely worn out your patience I actually have two more fics in progress for this series - both (probably) shorter. One of them lets you know what's been going on in Seyruun while Xellos has been making his souls, and the other one takes place much later, when Zel makes it out West again and Xellos (or rather, Dragonfly) needs a favor. (It goes about as well as expected.)


End file.
